Beyond Babylon

by Igiaba Scego

  “Come now, don’t cry,” Howa said. “I don’t like seeing people cry. Stop that.”

  Maryam was frightened by her new friend’s tone. Her sweet voice had distorted into something severe and unpleasant.

  “My cousin Jamila told me everything. She’s slick. She tells her mother she’s going to run some errands, but you know what she really does? She escapes and sees ten minutes of a movie every day.”

  “And how does your cousin pay for the ticket?”

  “Well,” the little girl stammered, “well, she says men pay for her. All she has to do is smile a bit and they pay for everything. I mean…”

  “Never do like her. It will end badly.”

  For the second time in the span of a few minutes, Maryam was afraid of her. “I won’t,” she said quickly. She didn’t try salvaging her cousin’s honor. The little girl knew the battle was lost.

  The audience members around them clamored. Some chatted calmly about their business. Those who understood the film’s Italian tried explaining to the ignorant what was going on. Maryam Laamane watched images in motion for the first time. It was so strange seeing people move across the white cloth.

  “Howa, do they come out of the cloth? Will they come say ‘hi’ to us?” she asked earnestly.

  “You’re really daft. This is the cinema, not one of those theater comedies, those riwaayado.”

  “What’s the difference?” Maryam asked.

  “There’s a big difference. With film, the actors can be everywhere at any time.”

  “The woman with the big chest is everywhere?” Maryam asked, increasingly dismayed. “Isn’t God the only one who is everywhere?”

  “You’re crazy, Maryam Laamane, really crazy. What does God have to do with it?” Howa laughed, shedding her hardness for the first time.

  “I don’t know, God always has something to do with it,” the girl said hesitantly.

  Maryam stopped asking questions. She concentrated on those men who ran away dressed as women. They were goofy in skirts and heels. The woman with the big chest was also silly, with her girlish smirks. It was a shame there weren’t alibesten in the film.

  “The alibesten won’t come on at all? Not even accidentally?” Maryam asked.

  “No, there are only thieves here, and then there’s Marilyn,” Howa clarified. She was almost as aloof as an Englishman.

  “Marywhat?”

  “Marilyn Monroe, the blonde woman who’s singing now,” a voice said from behind them.

  The girls turned around, frightened by this unrivaled, commanding tone. The voice was coarse like the rind of an unripe fruit. A voice that, at some angles, revealed glimmers of sweetness. Maryam shivered. It wasn’t fear, but deference, quite like devotion. Maryam had a blasphemous thought. She thought the voice belonged to God incarnate. Maybe he wanted to punish her for wickedly taking his name in vain a moment before. Maybe it was because of what made itself known to the ears before the eyes. He’d wanted to catch her by surprise. Maryam turned with her eyes closed, too scared of the punishment. She knew that Iblis himself dealt with foolish girls like her. She was sorry she hadn’t said goodbye to anyone, seeing as she’d be dead in a moment. At least she’d say goodbye to her new friend Howa. Suddenly, she grabbed her hand. When she opened her eyes, she saw that, luckily, God had decided to forgive her. In His place was only a woman with a red shaash and a drawn expression. She was tense as a clothesline.

  “Maryam, this is Bushra, the seamstress.”

  “It’s a pleasure, ma’am,” she said. “Is it really her, Howa? The one who sewed your—” Howa Rosario punched her on the thigh before she could finish her sentence. She didn’t even manage to say “underwear.” The little girl’s bestial cry resounded throughout the theater. The pain burned like chili pepper. Bushra didn’t laugh.

  “Ma’am, kindly, we have to go. The girl wants to see an alibesten movie.”

  Maryam’s new friend relieved her of a heavy weight by yanking her away at the speed of light. She didn’t have time to utter a single word, complain, ask, negotiate, or understand. Only when they were far from the theater did Howa attempt an explanation.

  “Forgive me, Maryam, but that woman wants me to marry her son. And I don’t want to.”

  Maryam didn’t know what to say. The arm Howa had grabbed to pull her away hurt. Everything hurt. She didn’t understand why Howa wouldn’t want to get married. All women wanted that.

  Howa began running and screaming, “I don’t want to, I don’t want to!”

  People took her for crazy. She ran away from Maryam, from everyone. She went far but came back after a few minutes. She’d been crying. Maryam was pleased to see that her expression had returned to calm.

  “If we run,” Howa said, “we can get to Missione Theater. I know for certain that they show cowboy and Indian films there and at Elgab. It’s not like here at Shebelle, which only shows lovey-dovey things.” The little girl felt the hope of seeing the alibesten burgeon inside her. She didn’t say a word to her friend. She limited herself to waiting for an explanation. Right on time, Howa said, “The show at Missione is the same at Elgab, but it starts later. When the first show ends at Elgab, they take the film canister to Missione. I know because one of my cousins does it, he has a bike and runs fast.”

  “Faster than us?”

  “No, not faster than us.”

  They got to Missione Theater exhausted. Maryam was happy. They showed a good movie with the alibesten. She was the only one cheering for them in the cinema. At the end of the film, Maryam promised her most special friend that she would marry the seamstress’s son in her place. Maryam placed her hand over her heart and swore. Strange tears appeared on the edges of Howa’s eyes. She stroked her little friend’s head. For the first time, the crooked-nosed girl felt loved.

  THE FATHER

  I should tell you about myself, about what I did, what I dreamed. It’s time for me to speak. But I think you should hear about Majid and Bushra first. About how much they suffered and how much, despite appearances, they loved each other.

  Marriage, many people were saying, had mellowed Bushra. She was fuller, more cheerful, more carefree. She had a good word for anyone, including those who had fiercely attacked and insulted her. She harbored no bitterness toward anyone, not even the worst offenders. She smiled peacefully and the world responded in kind. People did still whisper, though, especially the gallant men.

  “Eh, that Majid, who knows what he does to women…,” they elbowed each other knowingly.

  The truth was decidedly different. Bushra and Majid, as you know, had a chaste marriage. She sprinkled herself with unguents to seduce him but he turned away, ignoring her every night. Many nights he didn’t come home. He would sleep in the house of the white masters.

  Days went by without a purpose in the city of Mogadishu. Those were transitional years when people awaited a future radically different from the past. Years dominated by the masters. Others arrived to replace the old ones with a new language, new divisions, new practices. The people didn’t much lament losing the ones from before—the pale Italians—and happily began speaking garbled English. English tutelage lasted a short time, however. Someone in a high place, some palace of glass in a city across the ocean, decided to bring back the former masters.

  The glass palace was replete with preposterous women and men. It pretended to contain the world. They smiled with lips of varying sizes. Often the smiles were false. Each person had a fistful of them in their pocket to paste on their mugs when the moment was right. They were winning, classy, becoming smiles. Nothing was excessive in the glass palace except the decisions. These, more than being excessive, were cumbersome and sometimes utterly idiotic.

  And so, some of the many preposterous people in the palace decided that the Italians should return to Somalia.

  “They’re fortunate,” someone mumbled.

  “Yes, very much so,” somebody else said.

  Maybe they were thinking about pasta with tomat
o sauce and basil. Somalis hate pasta. They hate pizza, too. Their dream was flat bread dipped in meat sauce, perhaps with a sweet banana and a sugary shay as sides. A helping of bisbas, naturally. If the food wasn’t spicy, it didn’t make sense to the people of the Horn. You couldn’t put bisbas in pasta. It was too tough for their bittersweet taste buds. They also hated the Italians. They’d been tyrannized by them for years. Colonialism spilled from their ears. The hate was understandable and legitimate.

  “Why do they have to come back?” the people shouted.

  “Because you are not ready,” came the response from the glass palace (always very respectably).

  “We’re not ready? For what? Explain to us and you’ll see that we are.”

  Then an uncomfortable, suppressed cough from the glass palace. They knew very well that Somalis had long been prepared for their independence. They also knew they had to satisfy Italians like Alcide De Gasperi, that ranting psychopath.

  Behind De Gasperi stood everyone else, people like him, founding fathers. They had fought against Mussolini and fascism. Valorous people. But on the colonial question, once they had risen to power, they behaved exactly like the Duce. From Nenni to Togliatti, in fact, everyone prayed that eastern Africa would be firmly in Italian hands. The uniform didn’t matter, whether black or red, blue or green, all of them were imperialists to the core. The alibi for their revanchism was the economy, the explanation for every global malady, and secondly, the population “surge.” False Mussolinian myths that persisted and which were meant to slake the idiots.

  In the glass palace, some shook their heads. The French and English most of all.

  “Italians, my goodness. They don’t change much, do they?”

  “Bien sûr. Les italiens…” The French hated their cousins and always managed to throw in some impropriety hardly passable under censorship.

  No one thought highly of the Italians. Take Churchill, who saw the boot as a “den of lurid communists.” Even still, he couldn’t refuse the people who had helped wipe out Adolf Hitler. And anyway, the English, that exemplary clan, were making a big mess of borders and territory redistribution in half the world. It couldn’t go worse than Palestine, right?

  The United Nations gave Italy—a country that surfaced from a twenty-year fascist regime and a world war with broken bones, having lost the war and a pile of money on top of that, a country whose soul was destroyed—the United Nations gave to that very country the responsibility of guiding Somalia toward independence.

  “Now you must teach those Zulus democracy,” they decreed from the respectable palace.

  Ten years of Italian fiduciary administration in Somalia. It was mandated. Signed, sealed, and applauded. The infamous AFIS, the Italian Trusteeship Administration, was beginning.

  There was jubilee in Italy. Neocolonial magazines—Africana, Oltremare, Riconquista—published special issues in which the civilizing role of the Italian race was exalted. They were overjoyed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The glass palace offered rivers of champagne to everyone for an unexpected victory. One must remember that many of Alcide’s collaborators were in the ministry. They were previously paid by the fascist regime. Those in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were the same ones in the Ministry of Italian Africa. As in many sectors, from the university to the economy, all that mattered was that the crafty devils hadn’t been embroiled in the disaster of Salò. Afterward, in the constitutional republic, they were automatically pure, as though they’d never had an affair with fascism. Moreover, there were veterans’ interests to safeguard. A clean sweep, then.

  But how was the news received in Somalia? And by Majid, your grandfather?

  The question everyone asked was: “Can one truly teach democracy?” Somalis preferred the English to the Italians. Partly because pasta nauseated everyone, and partly because you could reason with the English. Abdullahi Issa, a young intellectual and leader of the Somali Youth League, said in those confusing days, “The English are perhaps worse colonists than the Italians, but with them, you work in freedom. With the Italians this is impossible. They don’t look for competent people, only gullible fools.” It was wise not to trust the English on the issue of borders, however. They sold you for chump change, and Churchill wanted to save the world from the red danger of global communism at all costs. In good Winston’s nightmares, the cigar disappeared and Stalin’s moustache obscured the boot until it was engulfed. It only took a second for the Englishman to abandon the young Somali leaders to their own troubles. Furthermore, those in the Somali League began irritating His Majesty’s Foreign Office. They were too forthright and radical for British tastes. First there were interests in Kenya to defend and then there was the hot button of Palestine. They decided to sacrifice the SYL in favor of full cooperation with Italy.

  That was a strange time for Somalia, which in hindsight could’ve produced better results. Somalis believed in their independence. Years of foment, dreams, anti-Italian demonstrations. But in the end even the League capitulated. The message of the global community was clear: go with the Italians or forget independence. The Somali League and the other parties began working assiduously with the trusteeship administrators.

  Our country, Zuhra, had a thousand things wrong with it: impoverished, divided by clans in eternal war, lacking infrastructure worthy of the name. There was so much work to be done. They had to build a ruling class and a base of discerning bureaucrats ready to confront the entanglements of the future and, at the very least, find a solution to the border problems with Kenya and Ethiopia.

  On paper, Italy promised they would do this and more. In reality, however, the objective was different. This was the era of the Christian Democrats, when Italy benefited from the plan and corruption became political praxis. Once on African soil, Italy taught what it knew best: corruption. A strong Somali political class wasn’t useful to the Bel Paese. The goal, if anything, was to rear a needy and corruptible political class. Though it wasn’t always the case, most seeds sown at the time were pernicious poisons. Almost all Somali leaders had done apprenticeships in Italy. Some, like the future dictator Siad Barre (who impacted our lives, Zuhra), were mentored directly by the Italian secret service. AFIS lasted from 1950 to 1960. In those ten years, infrastructure didn’t exist. Public administration came to a standstill.

  Elias grew up during the anti-Italian struggle and the first years of AFIS. First he had Bushra’s milk from her generous chest, then Bushra’s food right out of her magnanimous hands, and finally Bushra’s words pouring copiously from her modest lips. Black skin, white teeth.

  Bushra gathered small pieces of cloth for the child to play with and had him tie them in whimsical curlicues. He was bombarded with color at a young age. When he was older, she taught him how to stitch hems and attach buttons. Bushra didn’t know she was steering him toward her own profession. To her it was a way of letting him while away the time, a game like any other.

  While Elias knew Bushra’s world of needles, hems, fringes, buttons, fabrics, and colors very well, Majid’s world was alien to him. Majid himself was completely alien, even in his own eyes. Famey was the only one who knew him and shared his secrets. But she had died giving life to the child. She drowned in her blood.

  Sometimes, when he was sure no one was spying on him, Majid stretched his arms out in search of Elias, as Elias had done that first time when he made clear his will to live. It would last for a moment, a short-lived oblivion. The hideousness of life took away the dream. His tense arms became feeble, his ardent desire a weak flame.

  Because of this, he decided to work on a semi-permanent basis at the house of the gaalo he cooked for. Majid’s white employers were the Pasquinellis. Mr. Antonio and his wife, Magda Pasquinelli, formerly Remotti. The Pasquinellis were a family made up of father, mother, mother-in-law, three children, and a cousin. They came from a region near Padua, though Magda insisted that her father was Venetian. They’d been in East Africa before Mussolini. He had, at least. Africa was his hobb
y, and a lucrative one at that. Magda met him during an afternoon tea at her Aunt Marta’s house. The aunt was a jovial woman who enjoyed spending time with the family’s beautiful young people. Magda and Antonio were cousins, in fact, though distant. The tea was a blind date. He was just passing through, but she was dreamy-eyed. After a while, trunks and luggage were on their way to Benito’s empire.

  Magda didn’t like Africa very much, but she tried tolerating it because that was just how things were. She did everything she could to transform her corner of the city into a scaled-down Padua. She missed the porticos, Scrovegni Chapel, the unsmiling people. In that city, in Mogadishu, everything was wanton. Too much color in the clothes, too much exuberance in the gestures. And she hated the beautiful women. How many of them had her Antonio sampled? How many had he fooled around with? She knew he had. It was no secret that Italian men got into shenanigans with the locals. “The sluts don’t turn them away.”

  In this lurid city of negros, she only liked the cook. She had chosen him. He was a taciturn boy, hardly excitable, well-mannered. He cooked like a god. Of course, she had to make some slight revisions. For example, that fetish he had for putting spice in everything, she put an end to that vice. Apart from minor details, she was very satisfied with her cook.

  Majid, however, felt nothing toward the woman or her family. It was only work for him. They didn’t respect Somalis. They still believed they were masters, but he was fine with that. He didn’t want to think too much. He followed orders and kept his mouth shut. Work’s only purpose was to make him forget.

  He cooked meals calmly. Everyone told him, “Bravo!” Sometimes Antonio Pasquinelli added a “Superb!” He didn’t react. He didn’t show appreciation for anything, not even the glowing compliments. When they had guests, the Pasquinellis usually showed him off. They dressed him in European wear. They denied him the futah he found most helpful in the kitchen, and they placed a flower in his shirt pocket. Magda Pasquinelli told him: “Comb your hair, Majid. You look like a beggar.” He had curly, intricate hair that he’d stopped combing ages ago. He sprinkled two dashes of water on his hair in the mornings and left in the same way he’d woken. It was the only defect the Pasquinellis could find in the superb cook.