by Igiaba Scego
Manar didn’t know any songs and was irritated by the girl’s explosion of notes. Howa joined in with the Sanremo harmonies of Gianni Morandi and Rita Pavone. Italian spilled from Howa’s lips in words that were clear, crystalline, uninflected. Howa’s voice was trained. Reading the Holy Quran aloud had given her lungs the dignity of an operatic soprano. The devotion that shone through her voice quieted the entire audience, Maryam Laamane included. Even if the material was profane Sanremo diddies, the sacred erupted resolutely from Howa Rosario’s throat.
As she sang of love holy and profane, Hirsi’s 500 arrived at its destination after an hour and forty-five minutes. The women aired out their sweaty clothes once they’d stepped outside. Their thighs were freed from the glue of perspiration and the many hours spent in Hirsi’s ride. A sudden and suspect breeze cooled them. Maryam felt it nip at her vulva. She liked it.
“They say there are jinn hidden in the wind,” Manar said nastily. She had guessed the meaning of Maryam’s semi-open mouth. The girl took off her hat without saying anything. Embarrassment warmed her cheeks. She felt like a fire.
“The jinn love young girls’ virginity,” Manar added maliciously.
Jinn or boys?
Maryam’s mind was in turmoil like her heart. Bushra’s son had returned from his continental tour. Soon she would have to meet him—she already hated him—and soon she’d be forced to marry him. She’d promised her friend Howa. It wasn’t like her to renege on her word. The lip she’d bitten moments before started bleeding again. Maryam tried stopping it with a tissue. The seamstress Bushra’s son would be her future.
Maryam decided to focus on the present and the event they were about to attend. Her heart beat quickly at the thought of an unanticipated encounter. She wanted to track down the bicycle boy in that throng, the one who had taken her senses away with his unbuttoned, provocative, beige linen vest. “He is my present,” Maryam said to herself. She began whistling something in the style of Nat King Cole.
Afgooye, the city of cut tongues. There was a story about that city. They said that Mohamed Abdulle Hassan, the one the English called “Mad Mullah” and who Somalis called master, saydka, had wanted to punish the betrayal and impertinence of the citizens in that pigsty of the world. He’d cut their tongues out. Neatly, mercilessly. Saydka didn’t want to hear impertinences anymore. He wasn’t the kind to take a joke. He’d fought the English and Italians, he had thick skin. Saydka was against imperialism, but also against those who opposed him. The people in Afgooye stopped talking for some time. Later their tongues reappeared in their mouths like flowers, more cautious and wary. No one spoke nonsense in Afgooye anymore. The memory of Saydka and his sharp blades was too fresh to be forgotten overnight.
The Istunka took place on the periphery of the city, on the river’s left bank, in a land beaten by the searing sun. The trees were few, but those few were swarmed by the newly ravenous masses. Under every frond were automobiles, carts, men, women, children. Everyone wore strange wet rags on their heads. There were also three ambulances and a heavy security force. Everything was set for the fest to begin.
The festival revolved around the cane fight, the actual Istunka. Two contending teams had to battle it out in a melee using bludgeons of smooth, light branches. The group that made their rival retreat won. On the first day, none of the contenders could call themselves victorious. The goal of the fight was to make the enemy retreat, but initially they settled for a few meters. Two and a half hours wasn’t enough to declare a winner. At least three times that duration was needed. The first day was about making calculations. The teams evaluated the weak points, the strong, the trump cards, the unpredictables, the certainties.
It was also on that day that Maryam Laamane searched among the trees and parked cars for a boy with a beige linen shirt. The canes began filling the scorching morning air with their powerful hisses. From ten o’clock to one, it was open war. The first minutes were brutal, blows, blows, and still more blows. There were no rules, save that of marking one’s territory with brute force. In the opening minutes, members of the strongest group bared their chests and bragged. The brutality never lasted long. The weaker group slyly pulled back until they retreated. The short break allowed them to reconsider their strategy and come up with a plan. There was an etiquette to follow for these first offensives. The strongest managed to avoid humiliating their enemy. The weakest avoided humiliating themselves. For this reason, the retreat was always accepted without issue on both sides. Rare were the cases when the winning group chased the losing group down. Someone would’ve had to attract serious animosity for this to happen. These few meters were enough to declare a ranking. One didn’t have to totally humiliate the enemy. In the long run, this could be counterproductive. It wasn’t a given that the winner of the first few minutes was the winner of the entire competition.
The Istunka, despite the use of brute force, was a highly strategic competition. Blows were never delivered at random. Every move had a purpose in the game’s dynamic. The second half hour was dedicated, not by chance, to the rematch. Often it was in this phase that one could guess who would win the interminable struggle for power. One could even assist the clamorous turnabouts. In the dry heat, fatigue was quickly evident and strength alone was no longer enough. In the minutes that followed, mind and strategy took over.
The competition ended right before the noon prayer, only to resume again the next day. Like gluttons, everyone ran to show devotion to Allah and consume the food their stomachs demanded.
Afgooye was notable for its restaurants in the tukul, where they served bamia and goat meat with hot rice, a specialty that made people lick their lips. Maryam Laamane adored the coconut bisbas that was served as a condiment. Coconut-flavored bisbas was her passion. The mixture of spices gave her courage.
People gathered in the tukul, but they were lucky if they found a free space. They were good-mannered as they ate and drank hot, spiced tea to aid digestion. They had to hurry, for the best part of the fest was coming up. After all the rice and goat meat, Maryam Laamane felt heavy and weary. Her eyelids were closing.
As soon as she’d shut her eyes, the boy with the beige shirt passed in front of her. He wasn’t wearing the futah that day, but khaki pants and a white bush jacket. He was buttoned-up, his hair parted to one side and his wide forehead plain as day. His eyes were hidden by a pair of dark glasses.
Hirsi signalled to the boy with the beige shirt. Maryam Laamane plummeted into a fantasyland. The boy approached the table.
“Manar, Howa, I’d like to introduce the son of Bushra the seamstress, Elias Majid.”
Howa quaked. Maryam didn’t wake up from her daydream. She would’ve been happy to discover that her love and her sacrifice were one. Without knowing it, she’d fallen in love with the promise she made to Howa Rosario.
“When you were born, Elias was holding my shoulder. He was with me for all forty-nine hours, and when the umulisso saw your little head, I remembered the Istunka, the day your father and I decided to marry,” Maryam Laamane said into the recorder. In that moment, the woman was hit by a wave of odors. It was her uterus fighting to free the girl. Zuhra didn’t want to leave that warm uterine bed. She was doing just fine inside her mama. Outside, it seemed too dangerous. “You weren’t wrong, my treasure.” The climate in Mogadishu wasn’t the best. The military dictatorship was in full swing. Nothing would ever be the same again.
At the time, Elias hardly worked. His models, his fabrics were considered subversive by the proletariat order. Too sparkly and brilliant, too fluttery and with too many rhinestones. Capitalist decadence. Imperialist waste. In little time, the Somali textile industry and artisanal designers began adjusting to the rigid state. Everything became uniform and devoid of imagination. Divisions and standardization. Homogenous molasses that made most people’s stomachs turn. Mogadishu became the city of walls. The boys of the Ubax youth circles had to learn to be good patriots. They marched. The great Proletariat had advanced. In t
he Ubax circles, they learned to pose theatrically. They learned to be stopgaps of global communism. They learned to be an eyelid of Marx, an eyelash of Engels, a lip of Comrade Mao, or the tip of Lenin’s nose. They sang around the world and came home tired of posing as the revolution’s useless joints.
Elias didn’t like being a joint and he certainly didn’t like sewing those uniforms. He felt his art dying every minute. For the art, and partly because he was about to have a child, he joined secret opposition groups to the Barre regime. They felt conned by the word “communism.” They’d read Gramsci, they’d believed in Fanon’s struggle, they missed the years of the SYL, the youth league in which everyone reveled in their freedom from colonialism’s yoke. Elias had even invented a song about Howa Taqo, the woman who died during an anti-Italian demonstration. An arrow had pierced her. Her heart was lacerated. She continued running for her independence, although the arrow was lethal. Howa was his heroine, and when there were hot spells at night, Elias dreamed of stitching together the most beautiful dress in the world for her. A burial dress. A dress she could wear on Judgment Day.
When Elias joined the plot, Maryam Laamane had intuitively known that her husband was in danger and that they would throw him in prison. She was too heavy to move. The girl—she always believed she was carrying a girl in her womb—kicked spiritedly. Maryam was in the final trimester; her water was about to break, but she wanted to run like when she lightheartedly followed dreams and the flights of falcons, when she was a straw of a girl. Back then, she could run like her heroes, the alibesten. She couldn’t anymore. She was too heavy. She simply called for others. She sent for Auntie Salado, the tough one who almost never smiled. She was always by her side during that unusual period. Her husband, though, was lost in conspiracies and political delusions.
She didn’t think delusions could transform her Elias, so curious and sweet, into a dry, mean vegetable. But that’s what he became. And she, Maryam Laamane, was heavy with child. When Elias came to her door, Maryam realized she hadn’t seen him in twenty days. He slept in his boutique and dedicated all of his time to the conspiracy. He wore a beige shirt, like the first time she’d laid eyes on him. He hadn’t shaved that day. His beard had grown rebellious and randomly from his pointed chin.
“Labor started a few minutes ago. The umulisso was called.”
Elias squeezed her hand. Elias’s hands were sweaty and slippery. Maryam felt a tremendous contraction. She let go of his hand. She burned. It wasn’t a good sign. Was she losing it? Maybe her daughter was in a rush to get out and meet her papa so that he could see her at least once. Maryam had never thought about it until then, but it was true. The girl was coming before her time so she could meet her father. Yes, she was losing it.
“They’re looking for you, Elias. You have to go.”
“They mentioned Italy to me,” he calmly replied. Short breaths. Curt words. Veiled glances. Contractions.
“I’ll wait until she’s born.” He took her hand. This time it wasn’t the fire that Maryam was expecting, but a soft, firm grip. She knew it well. It was the same one that had won her heart that day in Afgooye in the seventies.
Maryam spoke into the recorder. Through it she hugged her daughter, Zuhra. These stories were the maternal love that she, Maryam Laamane, hadn’t had the chance to show. With her thoughts and words she went back to the distant day when her and Elias’s fates united. That day, Maryam was awakened by the sound of an alarmed Howa Rosario. They were in Afgooye, the sun was hot, the seventies were being sold and lived like a myth around the world. Maryam tried recounting everything she felt into the recorder. She wanted to tell her daughter every detail of her splendid love. She wanted to tell Zuhra that, despite the embitterment afterward, taking a chance on that emotion was worthwhile. She wanted to convince her daughter, outraged by her negligence, that when the moment was right, men could be some of the most miraculous creatures. Maryam dozed off and Howa tugged at her. The coconut bisbas and rice had calmed Maryam’s digestion. Howa Rosario’s tugging was anything but calm.
“Wake up, dummy, wake up.”
Maryam opened one eye eventually, slowly. This irritated Howa, who yanked her even harder.
“Hey!”
“You won’t believe who just came to the table. It’s him, the seamstress’s son!”
Maryam, who had never seen him, felt curiosity and terror.
“He asked us to dance.”
The people, satiated by treats from the Koonfur region of the country, transitioned to the afternoon songs and dances. Between the women’s buraanbur dances and the chitchat, there was nothing but babble in the city’s grand plaza. Young people were waiting to parade their lust in dance. Maryam waited to get a glimpse of the man with the beige shirt. With her other eye she cast a sidelong glance at the seamstress’s son, whom she would soon marry.
She dreamed of the moment when her gaze would rest lecherously on an unfastened shirt. The kabeebey on display, the young people’s dance in the Lower Shebelle. A dance in which men and women, between jokes and bantering, searched for one another, found one another, loved and hated one another. It was all in a rhythmic turn. Dressed in their traditional wear, everyone got in a circle, men and women alternating. Each man had to have a woman on both sides.
At the center of the circle, two boys kept the rhythm on medium-sized drums next to a couple of guitarists and a boy banging pieces of iron together, whom Maryam couldn’t see. The circle moved, the people sang and clapped their hands. In the circle, along with the musicians, there was a dancer. Her body moved to the beat. The woman was in the center of the circle, which shook with music. She brandished her buttocks and breasts. She coiled her arms like sliding serpents. The woman was like the waves of their ocean. The entire circle was rapt. Then the music suddenly stopped and so did her undulations. The dance ended with the girl moving and delicately resting her hand on the shoulders of the chosen dancer. He would enter the circle next and move as she’d done. Men and women cherry-picked their partners. The kabeebey was a game of seduction. Maryam had a burning desire to dance.
“You’re too young,” Howa Rosario said.
Manar stayed Howa’s hand. She gave Maryam the green light.
“She has a pretty dress on,” Manar said. “She’ll be well-received in the circle, she’ll find the man she’s looking for in there, and they’ll dance.”
After the dance she would look for the seamstress Bushra’s son and offer herself as his spouse. A promise was a promise, she couldn’t back down. She at least wanted to give the boy with the beige shirt a dance, a dance of untainted love.
The boy with the beige shirt took her hand. His grip was soft and firm. He was asking her for the things every girl desired: marriage, a wedding, security, love, children, status.
Maryam was sad.
“I wanted to run far away and follow wherever it was a falcon went.”
Maryam explained her friend’s story, her promise, to the beautiful stranger she wanted to marry. “The seamstress Bushra’s son will be my husband. I can’t do anything about it.”
He gave her a kiss and whispered his name. Maryam left with that name lodged in her ears: Elias.
“Think, Zuhra, no one had ever told me that the seamstress’s son was named Elias Majid, no one told me the details of my marriage. I only found out eight months later, when they’d already given me as a wife to the seamstress’s son who, as far as I knew, I’d never met.
Elias came to our gate every day. And every day I shooed him away. Everyone laughed then, especially Howa Rosario. She always said, ‘My friend, you don’t have to sacrifice yourself for me. It’s stupid to sacrifice love.’ But I was stubborn.”
When the nikah came, the marriage contract, Maryam Laamane waited for her husband in the nuptial room. He hadn’t shown up all morning. The people had partied, eaten, drank. Many had given her their best wishes. She felt like she was at a funeral. “I missed my falcon friends. I closed my eyes in my room and saw the scenes of
my kabeebey again, that interwoven dance he and I did in the circle of young people in Afgooye.” That day at the Istunka had been one of her life’s best. Lying on the bridal bed, she wondered if this night would be the worst.
Suddenly, the door opened and Elias appeared in a cloud. At least it seemed that way to Maryam Laamane. He wore the same beige shirt.
Maryam ran toward him.
“Elias, please, take me away. I know you came to save me. Please take me away from here.”
“I can’t,” he said, holding back his laughter.
“You can’t? Where did your courage go?”
“It isn’t a question of courage, you know, it’s that I’ve just married you. I want to be alone with you now. My mother, Bushra, told me the party was fun. A shame I missed it.”
“During labor, I thought again of those scenes from my youth. Of how different Somalia was. Us young people playing at seduction and dancing. Young people today don’t have time to dance. The war has eaten up their dreams. After forty-nine hours, you came out of me. You made me suffer for forty-nine hours. You didn’t want to leave my warm uterus. When you came, he looked at you. He caressed your bloody neck softly and lovingly.
You were so small, Zuhra, and already so loved. His hand slid over you and over me. A plane was waiting to take him to Italy. We would see him again, but by then our life together was done. This is why I lived, dear Zuhra. It was worth it.”
Yes, living is worthwhile, whatever the cost. And so is loving more and more. Maryam Laamane pressed stop. Fragments of her were now engraved on the tape.