Gifts

7

Duniya returns home to discover that a baby, apparently abandoned by its mother, has been found by her daughter.

Duniya tripped and nearly fell forward, regaining her balance just in time. She was entering her house when her foot, residing loosely in open-toed sandals, kicked the tips of her exposed digits sore against the lintel of the door. Calling down Koranic curses on wicked jinns lying in her path to cause her stride to falter, Duniya bent to touch the chipped nail of one big toe. What was making her so blundering and unsteady? She stumbled at the memory of knocking things over in Dr Mire’s cubicle yesterday. She also remembered tumbling headlong over Taariq’s brick barrier on the night they decided to marry. And there was no avoiding recalling the image of Zu-bair, her first husband, wobbling his way about, toppling things with a blind man’s walking-stick. Duniya solemnly vowed to herself to keep her balance and not fall.

Just then her giddiness climbed to a plateau, and she sensed the presence of a spirit paying her home an ethereal visit. She could not explain even to herself how she arrived at this conclusion, yet she was sure that she was bearing witness to something extraordinary. And then she heard the distinct whimper of a baby asserting its existence, a whimper coming from the direction of the room she shared with Nasiiba. Perhaps she was imagining being at the hospital, where perhaps such an infant had just been delivered, issuing a cry soft as the touch of afterbirth. She moved toward the open door, postponing self-questioning. At the doorway she stayed still for a couple of seconds, she saw a baby draped in a towel and lying on Nasiiba’s lap. One instant Duniya was going to say something terrible, and the next her tongue abruptly turned turtle and she was saying, “Isn’t it cute?” She was stretching her hand out to receive it, but Nasiiba seemed reluctant to part with the baby.

“I found him,” the young girl said.

“Give it here,” Duniya requested.

“It’s a boy,” Nasiiba said as she handed over the baby.

Duniya toiled with her breathing as she took the baby in her arms and sat down with the deliberate slowness of one troubled. Did this baby in any way resemble the one of her dream? Nasiiba was eager to tell her something, but she displayed no interest.

As she sat, a flexing of muscles reminded Duniya of the pain of labour, more than seventeen years ago. She also remembered that of late she had been hostess to several mysterious calls from birds and other beings. She made up her mind not to be the proverbial bad swimmer who, drowning, seeks support from the foam on the surface of the water which is killing her. No, she wasn’t going to ask Nasiiba any questions, was uninterested in establishing the foundling’s identity or where it had been found. The time would arrive soon enough when everything would begin to make sense.

She half-listened to Nasiiba’s pedestrian explanations as to where she had come upon the baby and in what state of filth, but couldn’t help remembering Harun and Musa’s story published in the newspaper, a story in which Elijah’s alter ego, the Prophet Khadr in Islamic mythology, had metamorphosed himself into a cow, perhaps to test their endurance. Had Khadr now chosen to enter her house in the guise of a baby abandoned near a rubbish-bin?

No sooner had her cursory examination confirmed that the foundling had an anus than they heard a man’s voice shouting the Somali greeting formula. The new caller was Bosaaso, and so Duniya said, “Please come on in.”

Nasiiba sat up in nervous tension as if the man had come to lay claim to the foundling and take him away. As far as Duniya was concerned, too many fresh thoughts were making demands on her; she had to deal with one at a time. She wished she knew if every isolated event was part of the same chain of incidents fettered to a common fate, hers and Bosaaso’s.

Bosaaso presently stood in the doorway. He looked from Nasiiba, who had risen to her feet, to Duniya, to the baby. His hesitant frame gained confidence the moment he decided the baby belonged to neither Duniya nor her daughter. It must be connected with Duniya’s work, but he couldn’t determine how. He had been to the hospital and Dr Mire had guessed that the reason his senior nurse hadn’t reported for duty today must be that she couldn’t find transport.

Nasiiba said to Bosaaso, “We found him.”

“Did you?” he said as casually as if he had known about it all along. He nodded at Nasiiba, and she nodded back, acknowledging each other’s presence. It was hard to believe that they had not met before and that Bosaaso had never set foot in this room. Presently he paid close attention to the baby at whose tightly closed fist he stared, and he asked Duniya, “Where did you find him?”

“Nasiiba did,” she said, with the formality of someone presenting one in-law to another. Bosaaso and Nasiiba smiled at each other.

“Where?” Bosaaso asked, crossing to sit in the armchair beyond the brick-barrier, and facing Nasiiba.

She told him where.

Silent, he held his head inclined. He looked about the room with the sensuous approval of somebody who knew it well. He was at home there, his body totally relaxed.

It was into this quietness that Mataan wheeled his bicycle with its wobbly tyre, his face pinched with the surprise of discovering his twin-sister and his mother in the company of a man he had never met before. Then he saw the baby. In the brief time he had to think he decided that the man and the baby belonged together.

He mumbled an “I’m sorry,” turned and was about to push his bicycle with the buckled wheel away when his mother called him back, explained about the foundling, then introduced him to Bosaaso.

Someone named the foundling Magaclaawe, meaning “The Nameless One.” Nasiiba and Mataan did not agree as to who had given it the name although they concurred on the time of day it had been bestowed: early afternoon, after Duniya had said, to Nasiiba and Bosaaso’s delight and Mataan’s surprise, that they would keep him. Nasiiba put no pressure on her mother to make this decision; she knew better, for it would have been counter-productive. Mataan would admit later that he hadn’t considered the question at all, whereas Bosaaso, who had mulled it over, felt that he hadn’t been close enough to Duniya for his counsel to be heeded. But everyone was clearly excited. When Nasiiba brought out a cot for Magaclaawe, Bosaaso was tempted to offer them all the baby things that had once belonged to his now dead son, but didn’t for fear that Duniya might resent it.

The foundling’s feeding noises, touching as a famished animal’s, put Duniya in mind of the Somali notion “ilmo jinni,” the offspring of jinns. This brought with it a motley of memories, including of Zubair’s first wife, who had been suspected of having an affair with a jinn. Although Duniya tried to disregard them, these thoughts came to her every so often. For instance how was it that Nasiiba had forgotten to settle the family’s debt? And why had she donated blood? Duniya decided to wait for the appropriate time, not confident of getting a satisfactory answer out of Nasiiba.

There was something else. Had she not always looked forward to the day when her children had grown up so that she could do what she desired with her own time and freedom? And had she not boasted to Bosaaso, on the day he gave her a lift in a taxi, that she had plenty of time? The foundling was now a reality. It remained to be seen if Duniya would now have more time to herself, more physical space and liberty.

Bosaaso cleared his anxious throat.. “I suppose we have to start worrying about the bureaucratic part of the foundling’s affairs. I suggest we register his existence with the authorities.”

Duniya noted he included himself in the “we.” She was pleased.

“But do we know enough about him, enough even to fill a single sheet?” Mataan asked.

“That’s one of the major points,” said Bosaaso. (It amazed Duniya how familiar all this was sounding: Mataan conversing with an adult male-friend of his mother’s.) “We report that we have no information about its ancestry, no inkling who his parents are.”

Duniya nodded her agreement.

“Somebody must know,” Mataan said. “Know a little more than we,” he added as an afterthought. Duniya looked from her son to her daughter and her face tightened; she prepared for a quarrel between the twins. In a sense she looked forward to it, wondering how Bosaaso would handle it.

She busied herself by feeling the foundling’s cheeks, then undoing the knots of the towel that served as a nappy. They all watched her. Now she felt the baby’s small feet, one at a time, now its knuckles; she did all this with the professional touch of a nurse, as if she meant to enter the details in a ledger. The midwife in Duniya ran far ahead of the mother and woman.

The air was so anxiety-ridden that Bosaaso couldn’t inhale any more. He said, “Perhaps Mataan and I should go to the local police station and report the foundling’s presence here.” He got up.

Duniya smiled and waited.

Mataan then said respectfully to Bosaaso, “Before going I suggest Nasiiba tells us how and where she found the baby.”

Duniya looked from Mataan to Bosaaso, her eyes avoiding Nasiiba’s altogether. The clouds on her mind’s horizon were dark with the gathering of a storm about to break.

Mataan, who tended to be cautious, addressed Bosaaso, “At least she’ll give us a clearer picture than we have so far, and that will surely make our task easier.” He sounded very reasonable.

Nasiiba said, “There was this small crowd of women surrounding the baby when I got there, and he was in a basket. I tell you I’ve never seen such frightened faces — the women’s, I mean. They wouldn’t go near the Nameless One and wouldn’t let anyone else either.”

Eyes ferried to and fro. Everyone was at sea, but the storm hadn’t broken.

Nasiiba went on, “First, the women warned me not to touch him. Then one of them said she was going to report the baby’s condition to the police — that’s right, she used the phrase: the baby’s condition, as though it were an ailment. She walked away, angry, you might say offended. Then the others engaged in a debate about how bad things were and so on, you know how people talk these days, complaining about food and petrol shortages. You know how this type of women talk,” and Nasiiba changed her voice in imitation of the woman’s, “she said: ‘Do you think young women nowadays would bat an eyelash before fornicating with any man in a car who was willing to give them a lift and a gift?’ Well, I challenged her, telling her she should blame the men, not the young women. That got them all going, arguing among themselves, though they were agreeing a lot of the time. One of them claimed there’s a link between urban squalor and the absence of a good moral code in a city like Mogadiscio. Another disagreed, but a third agreed with the two previous speakers, adding that there was indeed a link between urban drift and young people’s disrespect for their elders, and she quoted a variety of examples, some her own.” Nasiiba paused, enjoying the attention she was receiving and, like the good actress she was, decided to bring her statement to a close before anyone interrupted her. “While they were all engrossed in this sort of talk, I stole the foundling away, unseen, and brought him here.”

“Why?” Mataan asked.

Nasiiba pretended not to hear his question and turned to Bosaaso, who in turn asked, “You say no one saw you?”

“I mean no one followed me here, not that it matters anyway.”

Mataan had another question. “Did you bring him away in a plastic carrier-bag in which you made holes, or what?” He was clearly being wicked. “And why steal him in the first place?”

“What business is it of yours to ask me these questions?”

“It is as much my business to ask as it is yours to bring home a foundling without seeking anyone’s opinion.” Mataan was calm. “It is my business because if he stays here to share what little space we have or cries at night and we lose sleep, well, then, you see, my darling twin-sister, it is my business and Mother’s as well.”

A smile darkened Duniya’s eyes. Bosaaso was impressed by Mataan; unthinkingly, he touched the young man’s elbow, as if congratulating him on the delivery of a long speech. Nasiiba stood at an angle to them, her body leaning towards the wall in a rather unbalanced manner. “What if I refuse to tell you any more?” she said to Mataan.

“You won’t because that won’t do.”

Nasiiba was defiant: “You can’t make me say more than I want.”

Mataan looked in the direction of his mother, seeking her guidance. Several expressions spanned Duniya’s face, partitioning it into segments of sadness and exaltation. She said nothing.

Nasiiba spoke to Bosaaso, who was most attentive, “It was very exciting coming home, bringing him with me. He only weighs a few pounds. I felt as if I were taking illicit notes into an examination hall despite the presence of suspicious invigilators.”

“Where did you get the nappy and feeding-bottle?” asked Mataan.

“A neighbour gave them to me.”

“A lie has a short leg, Naasi,” Mataan said, “and it doesn’t run as fast as a truth, which will catch up with it sooner or later. I suspect there is little truth in what you are telling us.”

At that point Duniya said, “I wish we could take him to the hospital, have him seen by a paediatrician.”

Nasiiba was worried. “Is anything the matter with him, Mummy?”

“We all have visible and invisible wounds,” said Duniya, applying penicillin-cream on the child’s navel area, “and some wounds are curable, some not.”

That the foundling’s navel was infected had been noticed by everyone in the room, for Somalis associate the area with the she-camel that parents allot to new-born baby boys, in a sense the first potlach a male child receives. Somalis tie the umbilical cord at both ends with a hair plucked from the gift-camel’s tail. No such present had been offered to the Nameless One.

“We can take him to the hospital, can’t we?” Nasiiba inquired. She turned to Bosaaso. “You have a car — you don’t mind giving us a lift, do you?”

Mataan said, “There’s no point.”

“Why not?” Nasiiba challenged her twin.

“We can only take him after we’ve registered his existence with the police authorities,” Bosaaso explained.

“That’s typical men’s logic,” said Nasiiba, “ridiculous!”

“It’s in the nature of bureaucracy to be self-propagating.” Bosaaso continued. “First the Nameless One must exist. To exist he requires papers. To acquire these he must have names. To have these he must have parents, to whose identities he may be traced. Only then will the bureaucracy of a hospital deal with him.”

“We must do something,” Nasiiba said, and appealed to her mother: “Please make someone do something.”

“Off you go then, you men,” Duniya said to Mataan and Bosaaso.

Mataan and Bosaaso left. When Duniya looked up she realized that Nasiiba was preparing to leave. Did she not want to be alone with her mother for fear of being pressed to tell all she knew about the foundling? Duniya asked, “Where are you going, Naasi?”

“I won’t be long.”

She nearly asked her daughter to pass on her best regards to the baby’s mother and assure her that he would be taken very good care of. But she didn’t speak; her stare was fixed on a dragon-fly that had come into the room. And Nasiiba left.

The dragon-fly flew out of the window by which it had entered, but not before paying its respects to the foundling, above whom it hovered for a few moments and whose forehead it touched with its feet — in a gesture of blessing him?

Nasiiba and the dragon-fly had not been gone a minute when the Nameless One began to cry so heartily Duniya wondered if he were missing her daughter’s odour or the fly’s presence. The foundling cried as if possessed, dominating Duniya’s consciousness as no other baby had ever done before, not even one of her own. He threw into his performance all that he was capable of, coughing, sneezing, burping and wetting himself into the bargain. For the first time in her life, Duniya did not want to be alone with a baby She wished someone else were present to lend a hand, to share her agony, to bear testimony to what was happening.

Her prayer was answered. A woman was shouting, “Hoodi-hoodi” Duniya kept repeating the customary welcome, “Hodeen,” but no voice was loud enough to drown the foundling’s passionate fury An elderly woman, stooped with advanced years, entered. Duniya was pleased to see her. She remembered the woman as a neighbour, but not her name.

The old woman said, “So here you are, Little One,” touching the baby’s tear-wet cheeks and smiling. “Everyone in the neighbourhood is talking about you and how generous Duniya is, considering the times we are in and all, and you cry when you have no reason to.”

The foundling fell silent, listening to the old woman’s teasing remarks as though he understood every word. Something was becoming obvious to Duniya: the Nameless One missed human voices, not bodily contact. Was it possible that there had been the uninterrupted hum of human talk from the instant he was born? Duniya did not recall Nasiiba mentioning him crying when the curious old women talked to one another; certainly, he had not cried when there were four adults in this room debating what to do about him.

“He is all right,” the old woman said, “isn’t he?”

“Yes. He is.”

“You are very generous,” she told Duniya, “God bless you.”

Duniya felt awkward and self-conscious. It was then that she noticed that the old woman had a long hair on her upper lip, a singular hair looking out of a mole, dark as the most fertile of earths. Duniya couldn’t help focusing on the hair, active as an insect’s antennae, as the old woman spoke. “My grand-daughter goes to the same school as your twin-daughter, so that is how I know you. Maybe you know my granddaughter, the one with the non-Somali name — Marilyn. You won’t believe it, but she was named for me, and my own is Maryam. She tells me that Marilyn is the name of a famous actress who’s now dead. You know the young these days, bringing mysteries and foreign ways into our lives.”

“Yes, I know Marilyn,” said Duniya.

The old woman sat on the chair Duniya indicated. “J have come to offer our house’s blessing. I have come ahead of the others to tell you not to hesitate to ask if you need someone to look after the baby when you go to work and your children to school,” said the old woman.

“It’s very kind of you to make such a welcome offer, which I am glad to accept.” And Duniya saw the old woman eyeing the baby with understandable anxiety.

“We have lots of help,” said the woman. “There are a number of young girls in our house; we can always raise a couple more hands if necessary. So please do not hesitate to come when you need somebody to relieve you.”

Duniya assured her, “I won’t hesitate. Thank you.”

Then the old woman stretched out her hand to touch the baby. On the back of her wrist there was a ganglion, prominent as a hump. “You have not gone to work today, have you, for instance?”

“My not going to work had nothing to do with the baby,” said Duniya.

“I mean, you may not be able to go to work tomorrow?”

The old woman was anticipating quick decisions, things Duniya had not given thought to before. This was because a lot had not been thought out, and no one knew what would happen, least of all Duniya.

“Your daughter knows where we live, not very far from here,” the woman was saying to Duniya, “remember, my grand-daughter’s name is Marilyn,” and she shook her head sadly. “Mind you, it is not that I begrudge this American actress anything, but I always wished my grand-daughter to remember that she was named for me, and not after some American nude embellishing frustrated men’s fantasies and rooms; besides, I will not live for ever. But there you are.”

Unceremoniously, she got up to leave, taking each step as though it were an ordeal She stopped in the doorway to say, “Remember not to hesitate. We can help provide a baby-sitter.”

“Yes, I’ll remember the name Marilyn,” Duniya promised.

A man was saying Hoodi-hoodi and another was talking non-stop, trying to make a point. Bosaaso was announcing that he and Mataan were back, and the young man was eager to impress the older one. When the old woman walked past them, on her way out, in deference to her age they stepped out of her way and fell silent.

Then Bosaaso said anxiously, “The inspector, who sends his best wishes, says no one has reported a missing baby, nor has anyone else reported seeing one near a rubbish-bin. He says he is grateful to be informed and glad to know the foundling is in your capable hands, and he trusts that his presence won’t create inconvenienced.”

Duniya nodded her head silently.

“But bureaucracy being what bureaucracy is,” Bosaaso continued, “the inspector suggested you and I register as co-guardians, since it was I who reported the case in person and signed the statement.”

“You and I as co-guardians of the foundling?” Duniya said, asking herself what, in the future, this would mean. She also wondered whether or not he had taken her for granted.

“The inspector wondered if Bosaaso was willing to put down his name as co-responsible — that’s the word he used — just to be on the safe side,” Mataan said, “and that’s what we did, put your names down as co-responsibles for the foundling.”

There was something she did not like about the whole thing, but she was not sure what. Could it be that an unmarried woman, in her mid-thirties, with school-going teenagers would not be able to look after another baby, a foundling at that? Could it be that the inspector who knew her thought putting down Bosaaso’s name as co-responsible would look good on paper?

“The inspector confessed,” Bosaaso said, “that he had no idea about the legal status of such foundlings and those who happen to find them, since all this is a recent phenomenon, as he put it, part of this permissive society’s reward to itself.”

Mataan added: “I quoted to the inspector the Somali proverb: Whoever finds an unclaimed item, let that person appropriate it.”

“The inspector took us to task, asking lots of questions we had no way of answering,” explained Bosaaso. “Frankly it didn’t help matters when Mataan said Nasiiba knew a lot more than she’d told.”

“What made you make such a stupid remark?” Duniya said to Mataan.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” said Mataan, “but the truth is Nasiiba knows a lot more than she has told us, and she must be made to tell it.”

“Why?”

“For the good of everybody concerned.”

Duniya placed the sleeping baby gently back in his cot and turned on Mataan. “Do I ever ask you to tell me all you know about… everything and everybody? Aren’t there areas of your life that remain your private affair? Do I ever ask you how you spend your time or who your friends are, Mataan?”

“No,” he agreed, “but this is different.”

“Suppose she says she won’t tell us anything. What am I to do? Beat her up? Throw the foundling back into the rubbish-bin? I won’t press Nasiiba to tell me anything she doesn’t want me to know,” said Duniya. That dealt with, she said to Bosaaso, “How did the two of you manage to register the foundling?”

“I made a statement, which I signed,” said Bosaaso. “Because you weren’t with us, Mataan countersigned it. We gave as much detail as we had. The inspector opened a file labelled ABANDONED BABY CARE OF DUNIYA. He told us he would release word to the press, especially Radio Mogadiscio. We have to report back to him once we have taken the baby to the hospital for a thorough medical examination, at our own expense, which I didn’t object to. The idea is to allow time for the foundling’s parent or parents to have a change of heart; and because a paediatrician might find reasons why the parents abandoned him in the first place. In other words, is the baby well or ill?”

“And then what?” Duniya asked.

“A board will decide whether to entrust us with responsibility for raising the foundling, since we are in effect co-responsibles.”

“You and I?” Duniya said, feeling amused, humoured.

“And then following an appearance before a board, it will be decided if we are fit to be his parents.”

“On the condition that we are married?” Duniya asked.

“Maybe.”

“Enough of that,” Duniya said.

They fell silent and no one spoke for quite a time. Then the baby’s lungs exploded with a most furious cry surpassing in tension the one he emitted earlier when left alone with Duniya. As everyone began to fuss over him, their voices silenced him, comforted him.

To help quiet the foundling, Mataan told an Arab folktale:

One day Juxaa, the wise fool, invited a number of friends for a meal but discovered that he didn’t own a large enough cauldron to cook in. He borrowed one from a neighbour, promising he would return it.

The following afternoon Juxaa returned the huge pot he had been lent, but he put a smaller cauldron inside it. The neighbour reminded him that he had loaned him only the big one. Maybe the small pot had been borrowed from another neighbour?

“Your large cauldron, come to think of it, gave birth to a small one overnight,” said Juxaa. “I thought it unfair to conceal this miraculous birth from you. Given the situation,” Juxaa assured him, “both the big and the small pot are yours, and you may keep them.”

The neighbour was highly impressed and described Juxaa as a very trustworthy gentleman of rare breed. The two men parted, each praising the other and Allah as well.

A month or so later Juxaa borrowed the great cauldron from the same neighbour for a similar purpose, to give a feast. When Juxaa didn’t return the huge pot on the promised day, nor even a week after that, the neighbour went in person to Juxaa’s house, asking to be given back his property.

Juxaa hung his head, saying, “I’m sorry I forgot to come and commiserate with you, for your huge pot died and we buried it.”

“Died?” asked the neighbour in utter disbelief.

“That’s right. It died and we buried it.”

The neighbour burst into a wicked laugh. “Now whoever heard of a brass cauldron dying and being buried?”

“Come to think of it,” retorted Juxaa, “neither had anyone else ever heard of a large brass pot giving birth to a smaller one.”

Defeated, the neighbour went away, bothering Juxaa no more.

8

In which Duniya’s half brother turns up and the old animosity between them is revived. Duniya’s younger daughter from her second marriage visits. But it is Bosaaso who comes first thing in the morning.

For Bosaaso the foundling served as an excellent pretext to call at Duniya’s place whenever he pleased. The previous evening he had come as late as ten o’clock and, seeing the lights on and the windows and doors open, had presented himself, half-apologizing. Asked to join them, he had eaten with them an ill-prepared meal. No one stood on formalities. Nasiiba had had the youthful bravura to say to him, “Would you like us to offer you a bed, given how often you are here?” He took the statement in the light-hearted spirit in which it had been made, replying humorously that it would be his honour to accept such generosity, especially from Nasiiba. The elderly woman was there, a welcome participant in the fun and games, and said to him, “But of course she is teasing you.”

The gathering turned into a party, with more people arriving later than Bosaaso and not leaving until after midnight. He was enchanted to make the acquaintance of Marilyn, who bore a definite likeness to her namesake. She, Mataan and Nasiiba took turns preparing and serving kettles of tea, while other neighbours who had come to see the foundling and visit Duniya alternated between despair and optimism, winning or losing their card game. Old Maryam made herself useful by holding the baby or changing his nappy when his stomach ran a mile of diarrhoeal anxiety, as it had done rather frequently, to everyone’s alarm. Duniya was asked her trained opinion as to whether they need worry; she suggested they wait a day.

A group of people consisting primarily of curious neighbours sat in open-air congregation outside their badly ventilated houses, chatting among themselves while watching Duniya’s visitors’ comings and goings with keen interest. Some of them commented on the harmonious fellowship between Duniya’s twins and Bosaaso, and between Duniya herself and Bosaaso.

At about a quarter past midnight Bosaaso had left in his car, returning less than half an hour later with something in a carrier-bag. The onlookers could not tell from where they were if he brought medicine for the baby or food for the adults. But those inside would report that more tea was drunk, more losing or winning hands of cards dealt. In the laughter one might have heard as well as happiness perhaps a touch of tension too. Those present in the foundling’s room might even have caught the quiet looks Duniya and Bosaaso exchanged.

Now he said, shielding his eyes from the sun, “Good morning, Duniya.”

She seemed pleased to see him though, from her red eyes, he guessed she had hardly slept. The house was so quiet, Nasiiba must have gone out already, and Mataan, whose door was shut, must be asleep. A young girl whom Bosaaso had not seen before was washing nappies and towels. Was this the help Marilyn’s grandmother had promised, the loan of a maid, as a stop-gap measure?

“Did you manage to close your eyes at all?” he asked.

“Not long enough to dream,” she said.

His eardrums throbbed with the excitement of his heartbeat. “I wish I could relieve you.” A thoughtful pause. “Why don’t I?”

“Did you get home all right?” she asked.

“I don’t know how, but I did. The car took me home,” he said.

They fell silent, looked at each other, smiled, looked away. Something was making them feel ill at ease. It was apparent in the way they stared, then avoided meeting one another’s gaze.

He said, “Before I forget. What are you doing tonight?”

Her eyes were unfocused, her grasp of time vague. She found herself staring at his long-fingered hands, wanting to touch them. She said, “I’m doing him,” meaning the foundling. “Why? Do you want me to take you to the cinema?”

The radio had been on since before his arrival, and he stared at it now, not listening to its jabber, but as if being reminded of an incident from his past. Duniya explained why she had the radio on: the foundling seemed to have a perverse need to hear uninterrupted, continuous noise; otherwise he burst into a worrisome cry.

“When I got home after two,” Bosaaso said, “I found a note from Mire inviting me to dinner. In a postscript, he wondered if you might like to honour him with your presence — in plain language, if you would like to join us.”

“Why in a PS?” she asked, smiling.

“I suppose he’s not sure about our relationship or if you would accept his invitation. Besides you might think him presumptuous to suggest I bring you along, just like that.”

“Why is that?” she said.

“Maybe if he’d extended a formal invitation to you and you turned it down, he would feel hurt. But if, despite being invited in a PS, which is an afterthought, you still come, then he will feel honoured. I don’t know.”

“What if I don’t go?”

“It will be boring, just him and me.”

“What would you like me to do?”

“It would please me if you came.”

“Then I will.”

They both moved forward as though to embrace, but did not. They felt uncomfortable being alone with each other and wished someone else were with them. Maybe if somebody else joined them, the nervous anxiety would be minimized and the tension generated by their being alone would then assume a certain nobility, bestowed with its own beauty.

Bosaaso appeared eager to leave, and she said, “Please don’t.”

She called to Mataan, who emerged from his room ill-clad in a sarong with a towel draped round his neck and a book in hand. He disappeared on seeing Bosaaso, to reappear shortly thereafter, decently trousered and wearing a UNICEF T-shirt a few sizes too large for him. What would Bosaaso like to have?

“Tea, please. And, Mataan,” Bosaaso said, more at ease now the young man had come on the scene, “I brought some sugar. It’s in a milk-powder tin, on the front passenger seat of my car.” He proffered his car keys, adding, “Could you fetch it?”

Taking no notice of the keys, nor the offer of sugar, an item not easily available in the country, Mataan said, “We have sugar, don’t we, Mother?”

“I believe we do,” she said.

Mataan’s eyes were on her, solicitous. He didn’t wish to offend anyone, not least his mother, remembering previous occasions when he had brought into the house gifts of which she disapproved.

She said, “Could you find a cake of soap for the young help so she can wash her own robe? You know where we keep laundry-soap, in the top cupboard of your room; and on the shelf directly below that you’ll find sugar, if there’s none in the kitchen.”

“Yes, Mother,” Mataan replied, and turned to leave.

Bosaaso displayed slight disappointment at his gifts being rejected. He was at once anxious and relaxed, both happy and unhappy. “Mataan?” he called.

“Yes?”

“I’ll come and give you a hand.” He didn’t want to be alone with Duniya. At least for the time being, he preferred her son’s company to hers.

“It’s not necessary,” Mataan said.

“I’ll come all the same.” And the two men walked away side by side, towards the kitchen, a small cubicle, resembling an out-house, and next to it, a shower-place whose walls, Bosaaso noticed, had water-stains, dark as silver.

Duniya thought that marriage was a place she had been to twice already, but love was a palace she hadn’t had the opportunity to set foot in before now. If what she and Bosaaso were doing was the beginning of a long courtship that might eventually lead to such a many-roomed mansion of love, so be it. So far she had only seen glimpses of it, in a rear-view mirror, in the eyes of a driver who wasn’t a taxi-driver. Prior to that she had seen signs of it, in a dream, fuzzy in shape as a butterfly in zig-zag motion. Granted, she had since then feasted on moments full of rejoicing, in glances furtively delivered and withheld from public recognition. There was no rush, she said to herself. They had all the time in the world to explore the depths of their feelings for one another.

The foundling began to stir in his cot. Because of the fluctuating voltage of the city’s electricity, the volume of the radio had gone very low, to the point of almost fading completely As the power stabilized, so did the volume of the radio transmission, and the baby went back to sleep.

Duniya was telling herself: People will say wicked things about my motives, probably accuse me of being after the man’s wealth. But what do they know about the motives of a woman like me? Let them badmouth her; she didn’t care what people said. One would have to wait; one couldn’t predict where the tale would lead. When she had accepted to honour her half-deaf mother’s request to marry Zubair, she had said it was an aberration. If that was a lapse, and Taariq only a stop-gap, could Bosaaso be the conflux of their river of souls, flowing into one another, together, for ever and ever?

Bosaaso came in. “Here we are,” he said, placing on a low table a tray on which were three cups, each filled to the brim with tea. Mataan arrived with slices of home-made cake, which Nasiiba had baked.

The three of them were sitting in the courtyard, sipping tea and nibbling cake, when Nasiiba joined them. As usual the young woman was fall of stories and the excitement her tales generated, fall of rumours. While telling snippets of some and narrating fragments of others, Nasiiba helped herself now to Duniya’s tea, now to untouched cakes, and now Mataan’s glass of water, like a pollinating butterfly going from one flower to another.

“Oh, what rumours!” she exclaimed.

Just before noon, a man angered by such a rumour came to call. He had come directly he was given news about the foundling. He was Shiriye, Duniya’s half-brother, her senior by twelve years. His ugly voice announced his arrival.

Entering, he shouted Duniya’s name angrily, not a greeting. Fat-bellied, he met their hostile stare with indifference. He stared back longest at Bosaaso, whose face he couldn’t place, a man who, as far as Shiriye was concerned, was not-family.

Soon he too felt uncomfortable as he inhaled the discomfort in the air and as his gaze met with inimical stares. His Adam’s apple moved fast up and down as if he were choking on his own saliva, and he wiped sweat from his forehead with the intensity of someone concealing a thought best unspoken. Bosaaso, feeling very uneasy, got to his feet to shake the man’s proffered hand. Mataan stood up, not only to surrender his seat to his uncle, but also to receive a gentle pat on his shoulder, while Nasiiba, like Duniya, remained seated and watched the unfolding drama with amused detachment. Before seating himself, Shiriye said to Bosaaso, “I have no memory of ever meeting you and doubt if anyone will bother to introduce us. My name is Shiriye.”

“People call me Bosaaso,” he said, heels together in military fashion, as if it was expected of him when saluting a senior army officer.

Shiriye said, “I am Duniya’s half-brother, a vocation I would not choose for myself, I assure you.” He fell silent but stayed as erect as he could, considering the tension surrounding Mm.

Silent, but never standing still, because Shiriye’s body was incapable of being still. He was like a huge animal whose tail was swishingly busy chasing away flies; or the wide nostril of a hippopotamus twitching of its own accord; or the jaws of a cow munching last night’s cud; or a German shepherd dog airing its oversized tongue. Duniya had these beastly thoughts about her half-brother who was not a handsome man, if the truth was to be told.

He was short, fat and almost totally bald. His belly spilled over his tucked-in shirt and tight army belt like the triple chin of an overweight man with blood-pressure trouble, and he wore a cravat. He breathed like a heavy snorer. He had short hands and stubby fingers, one of which was busy picking his nose and pulling at hairs in his nostrils. “What is all this I hear, Duniya?” he said, taking a step towards her as though he might strike her. Trained to cover his back, like a guilty man expecting to be stabbed from behind, he relaxed his body only when Nasiiba got up and stood out of his way, so he might sit with no one’s chair behind his.

“Now what is this you have heard?” Duniya said.

“I’ve heard about a baby. Where is it?” But he appeared not in the least interested in the baby’s whereabouts, “A foundling, sex male, that is what I have heard.”

“I thought you liked baby boys,” she replied.

“Only if they are mine or if they are genuinely my sister’s,” he said, and burst into laughter, as though this were funny. He fell quiet, embarrassed that no one joined his laugh. Then he spoke slowly, intending to hurt Duniya. He said, “I have heard it said that you have been entrusted with the destiny of a bastard.”

“A what?

“The destiny of a bastard has been entrusted to you,” he said, deliberately.

Nasiiba and Mataan grinned conspiratorially, like clowns at a street-theatre performance, and waited for their mother’s reaction, hoping she would somehow wrong-foot Shiriye and win this round. Bosaaso, however, decided that Duniya and Shiriye were staring like two people who had hurt each other many times before and were unwilling to forget or forgive the hatred this had engendered. And he thought of other quarrels involving his late wife Yussur and her mother. He would not have believed it possible to communicate so much hate in a single, concentrated look as Duniya was then giving Shiriye.

Shiriye was saying, “Bringing up a bastard is sin, the wages of which are the fires of hell and Allah’s anger.”

“How do you know the baby is a bastard?”

“Isn’t he?”

“I said, how do you know he is?”

“We don’t know his parents, do we?”

“Could he not be an orphan, both parents dead?”

“A bastard is a bastard is a bastard. What difference does it make if one parent is known or neither? Where did you find him anyway? In a rubbish-bin?”

Not wanting to get angry, she said, “Nasiiba found him.”

“She is trouble, this Nasiiba of yours. She finds nothing but trouble, is involved in nothing but trouble.” His glower met her grinning eyes. They had nothing but hate for each other, Nasiiba and Shiriye, who appeared in her nightmares to whip her for disobedience. “Look at you,” he now said to his niece. “Your twin-brother has never brought any dishonour into your household.”

Nasiiba said nothing. But Duniya contradicted him, “Don’t you remember predicting Mataan would be an alcoholic before he was ten?”

“I made a big thing out of a small incident,” he said.

“Mataan is no alcoholic, as you can see,” she insisted.

“How do you know?”

Duniya said, “We do things openly in this household, not behind each other’s backs.” They stared daggers at each other, “I don’t collect bride-wealth behind a younger half-sister’s back, nor do I write letters weighed down with falsehoods describing Duniya as a whore, and Mataan as an alcoholic before reaching his teens.”

Shiriye got up, angry. Bosaaso looked away. The twins stood to one side, whispering in a comer. It was obvious that Duniya had not forgiven her half-brother who, she once said, had never made her a single gesture of kindness, not one; with whom she had never shared a single instant of joy not a second of fellowship. She now said to him, “Sit down. Where are you going? Haven’t you come to visit your sister Duniya? Make yourself at home.

“How can I?” he said, shaking his head ceaselessly.

“We once agreed, you and I,” said Duniya, “that buried bones must not be dug up. But you never stop, like a hungry dog digging by feel and smell And when I put on display the ugly skeletons you’ve dug up, you rise and are ready to depart.” She paused, and was sarcastic again. “Now what in your elder half-brother’s wisdom had you in mind to do for me when you decided to pay me a visit?”

Shiriye shifted in his seat, ill at ease. Bosaaso, like an asthmatic leaving a room a smoker has entered, got up. Duniya motioned to him to sit and he did so obligingly.

“I’ve come intending to bring only goodwill,” said Shiriye, “and to inquire if I may be of any assistance. I have not come to unbury bones whitened by death. Nor do I like being compared to a dog.”

“Tell me specifically what you’ve come to offer,” said Duniya.

“I have arrived to proffer the advice of an elder brother,” he said. “We won’t get into semantic questions about whether the foundling is a bastard or an orphan. My question all along has been: how will you manage to feed yet another mouth?”

“God gives to whom he pleases,” Duniya said.

Bosaaso averted his eyes, letting them dwell on an eagle above.

Shiriye asked, “Does Abshir know what use you’re making of his highly valued monthly gifts in hard currency?”

“What do you think our brother will do if he’s told I’m running a mini-orphanage?” said Duniya harshly. “Do you think he would disapprove and so discontinue his remittances?”

“If I were Abshir, I would discontinue.”

“Abshir is my full-brother,” said Duniya, “my mother’s son.”

“Thank your fortunate stars I am not Abshir,” said Shiriye.

“I do, I do,” said Duniya.

They both remembered their respective mothers’ quarrel in which Duniya, then only a foetus, was hurt as the two women hit each other with pestles. Duniya also recalled accusing Shiriye of writing a letter to Abshir in which he described her as a street-walker. She claimed she had been sent a photocopy of the missive. Added to this was the fact that Duniya had never forgiven her half-brother for his secret acceptance of bride-gifts from Zubair.

Shiriye said, “Without digging up more skeletons decayed with years of hate and distrust, could you answer my question and tell me why you want to keep the foundling?”

“Would it make sense to a man like you, who has never known the meaning of a kind gesture, that we are keeping him out of pure kind-heartedness, motivated by goodwill, an act of mercy such as one might extend towards a blind man crossing a dangerous road?”

“Did I hear you say ‘We’?” Shiriye asked.

She said, “Yes, you did.”

Bosaaso made his first and only contribution to the discussion: “Duniya and I are co-responsibles for the foundling.”

“There’s nothing to worry about, in that case,” Shiriye responded.

“How do you mean?” Duniya challenged him.

Shrugging his shoulders, Shiriye smiled first at Bosaaso, then turned to his half-sister. “I needn’t worry any more, since there is a man involved in helping you raise the foundling, and I trust that you won’t encounter financial or social difficulties.”

Duniya’s explosive rage was sudden. “Are you telling me, Shiriye, that just because a man has registered his name together with mine as co-guardian of the foundling, everything is fine?”

“I’m saying there’s no cause for worry with a man like Bosaaso sharing responsibility. A woman needs a man by her side, for people to take her seriously and for the world’s doors to open so she may enter with her head raised and her person respected.”

Duniya rose to her feet, her voice angry. “I want you to get out of my sight this instant.”

Shiriye made a friendly overture to Bosaaso, who decided to side with Duniya. Then Shiriye appealed to his nephew and niece, “What on earth has got into her?”

She repeated, “I want you to leave this house now, Shiriye.”

“But…!”

“Otherwise I will not be held responsible for what happens.”

Shiriye saw hate in the eyes of all whose reaction he sought. In Bosaaso’s the sun’s rays were mixed with scorn. A trained army man, Shiriye knew when to retreat. He did so quietly.

No one spoke for a long time, not even Nasiiba; nor did the foundling wake or cry in the prolonged silence. However the young maid, finding all this incomprehensible, made a furtive departure, maybe to report to the outside world on what had happened.

Mataan then told the story of how the dik-dik, a small African antelope, took vengeance on the elephants: “One day a dik-dik was minding its own business, passing along a narrow path in a dense forest, when an elephant in a hurry tried to overtake it. After several attempts, the irate elephant hit the dik-dik with his trunk, and it fell into a huge pile of elephant dung. On recovering from the shock, the dik-dik called a gathering of its clan, at which the dik-diks decided to become territorial and to shit always at the same spot in an attempt to make a huge mountain of their dung in which an elephant would get stuck, trunk and all. And it came to pass that one evening a cow-elephant did.”

A quarter of an hour after Mataan told his unappreciated story, everyone heard a primeval scream. Bosaaso saw Duniya raise her head in the attitude of a she-camel scenting the approach of one of her young. A series of welcoming groans came from the twins, followed by an increasing spiral of noise, culminating in a final yell, which brought forth a young girl who hurled herself into Duniya’s open embrace. There was absolute joy in their getting together, animal rejoicing. Bosaaso thought again of a she-camel’s reunion with one of her own after months of suckling a straw-filled dummy calf.

The twins joined in the hug, but Bosaaso did not feel excluded. He was happy to bear witness to so happy an encounter, on the heels of such hate between a half-brother and half-sister.

“Come, come.” Duniya patted her children on their backs. “Let us introduce Hibo-Yarey to Bosaaso.”

Mataan and Nasiiba would not let go at first. And Yarey was saying, “Where is he? Where is he?” No one was any the wiser, even when the twins let go, whom she meant: Bosaaso or the baby.

Duniya restrained Yarey by taking hold of her hand, dragging her towards Bosaaso, to whom she intended to introduce her. But the little girl wanted to be shown the baby, and was repeating her question, “Where is the baby, Duniya?” (Not living with her, Yarey called her mother Duniya, not Mother or Mummy as the twins did.)

Now each twin took one of Yarey’s hands and brought her to the room where the baby lay in a cot, asleep, “Will one of you please bring him out of the cot and give him to me to hold?” she said.

Mataan lifted the Nameless One from the cot and handed him to Yarey, who received him as a fragile item. Her chest seemed about to explode with her excited breathing.

“Sit down if he’s too heavy for you,” Duniya suggested.

The twins sat on either side of her, balancing the baby on the little girl’s lap. The three of them chattered uncontrollably, Nasiiba summarizing the foundling’s history so far.

“How come you’re here without your overnight bag, Yarey?” Duniya asked.

“Because Uncle Qaasim didn’t have petrol in his car, so he couldn’t bring me. Someone else gave me a lift to a place not far from here, and I ran the rest of the way.”

“Who told you about the baby?” Nasiiba asked.

“I was running home, you see, when Marilyn stopped me to tell me about it. I ran faster to get here because I so was excited.” Despite having one deformed tooth and another that was lifeless, dark, dwarfish-looking, Yarey none the less had a sweet smile.

Duniya now took the opportunity to introduce her to Bosaaso, “Yarey, this is Bosaaso.” And to him, “This is Hibo-Yarey.”

“I guessed as much,” said Bosaaso.

Yarey’s smile was as disarming as a gypsy’s charm. “Has the baby been given a name yet?” she asked Nasiiba.

“His name is Abshir, after Mummy’s brother,” Nasiiba lied.

Mataan corrected his twin, “No, Yarey. The baby has not yet been given a name.”

“But he must be given one,” insisted Yarey.

“We’ve been calling him the Nameless One,” said Mataan.

“Why don’t we give him a proper name, his own?” Yarey asked.

“First we must know we can keep him,” interjected Duniya.

“But we found him,” Yarey rationalized. “Nasiiba was the one who found him, so he’s ours.”

“There are legal problems to solve before we can name him,” said Duniya. She was trying to drown out Nasiiba, who was telling Yarey about Bosaaso, saying that he lived in a house larger than Uncle Qaasim’s, had a TV set, the most recent make of Japanese video recorder and an extremely varied collection of video cassettes; and that he would eventually return to the USA where he had lived for over twenty-five years. If he and Duniya married, which was likely, then they all would move to America.

Suddenly, Yarey said, “I’ll take the baby to Uncle Qaasim and Aunt Muraayo’s house and leave him there for them to raise him. Is that all right, Duniya?”

“Why?” replied a surprised Duniya.

“Then I can come home, to live here.”

“But…!”

“If Uncle and Aunt have another child to replace me, then I won’t feel so terrible leaving them, you see!”

“But you can come home whenever you like,” said Duniya.

Nasiiba whispered more secrets in Yarey’s ear. Yarey looked from her mother to Bosaaso, and back to Nasiiba, who nodded encouragingly, For a second or so, Yarey remained quiet.

“What did Nasiiba whisper to you, Yarey?” Duniya asked.

“Nothing.”

Mataan moved away from his sisters, distancing himself from what was happening. Bosaaso, self-conscious, fell under Yarey’s intense stare as she pondered what was going on between him and her mother. But Duniya appeared ecstatic, and the house had a festive air, because of a foundling who made them all new friends.

“Can I come home then, Duniya?”

“Of course.”

“Will Uncle Bosaaso let me watch his video?” said Yarey.

Duniya could not think of how to reply. She looked at him, then at Nasiiba, then focused on the horizon, too embarrassed to speak.

“Yes, of course,” Bosaaso said.

But Yarey sensed she had upset Duniya. She motioned to Nasiiba to take the foundling. She then went to where her mother was sitting and knelt by her, kissing her hand. “I am sorry, Duniya. I shan’t listen to Nasiiba any more, I promise.”

Bosaaso rose to leave. “We’re expected at Dr Mire’s at seven-thirty. I’ll come for you,” he said.

“Stay well,” Duniya replied.

“You too,” he said.

MOGADISCIO (SONNA, 30 JULY)

The average Somali household cuts down (and uses fully or partially) as many as 150 trees or shrubs annually according to a study published last week by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock. A vast number of shrubs or trees are uprooted for one purpose or another and a great many of these are burnt as fuel or used as construction material for fencing or walling compounds.

This loss of woodland has in part caused a decrease in rainfall, in the availability of water perse, and in the presence of wildlife over large areas of the Republic. The report, compiled by Somali experts and the first of its kind, adds that overstocking of camel and cattle herds strips more and more tracts of land of trees, shrubs and grasses, thus contributing to drought.

The report commends the Somali government, aid agencies and friendly nations that have attempted to minimize the country’s disaster, which can be understood in the light of similar environmental crises occurring in Africa and throughout the Third World.

9

In which Duniya, in a dress borrowed at Nasiiba’s insistence, goes with Bosaaso to Mire’s home for dinner.

While taking his siesta, Bosaaso saw a handsome-feathered, heavy-footed bird, a cross between a hawk and an eagle, for which he had no name. The bird remained quiet and contemplative, perched on a telegraph pole at the edge of a park where he and his late wife Yussur were picnicking with their son in his cot, a portable radio playing nearby.

At some point the bird took off and was gone from sight for a good while. When next they were aware of its presence, it was descending threateningly from a great height, coming closer as though it meant to do the baby harm. Both parents were relieved to see the bird fly away, clutching in its beak not their child but a flower.

Bosaaso woke up, disturbed. Immediately he recalled that he and Duniya had a dinner engagement with Mire. He showered in haste, drove as fast as was safe, and was parked in front of Duniya’s place on time. He rushed into the Women’s Room breathless with worry and relaxed only after making sure that the foundling was unharmed.

On their way to Mire’s, they both sat like tailor’s dummies — Bosaaso because he had decided not to talk about his siesta nightmare, and Duniya because the dress which she had put on at Nasiiba’s insistence was beginning to feel tight round the waist, making her breathing difficult. Both smiled anti-septically, saying nothing for a long while.

Bosaaso, uneasy at the silence, said, “I envy Mire; living alone, he has a self-preserving quality about him. I guess I envy you too, mainly because, like my mother, you are yourself an activity. That is to say you happen, and the rest of the world happens.”

It occurred to Duniya how little she knew Dr Mire, and although she did not say so in as many words, she said circumspectly, “A balloon with air in it flies where there is wind.”

Bosaaso did not understand her meaning, but said, “If you get to know him better, you’ll appreciate how much he enjoys the company of people who interest him. You’ll be surprised to know that he speaks a great deal more than me, for instance.”

“Does he ever talk about himself?”

“He does.”

“But you don’t?”

He smiled, and said, “Don’t I?”

“Hardly,” she said.

“Maybe there is little to speak of.”

“Are you hunting for praise-songs like the ones your mother used to improvise as lullabies when you wouldn’t sleep?”

It struck her how tense they both were, and how aggressive she was being. The need for self-restraint was becoming too much to bean It was easier to discuss Dr Mire than their own feelings for each other. Neither had spoken a single loving word aside from the one occasion when Bosaaso had said that he had been drawn to her. It wasn’t that there was little closeness between them. On the contrary, there was a great deal of physical attraction. But both were cautious, perhaps feeling they couldn’t afford to fail each other in their expectations.

“You’ve never been to Mire’s place, have you?” he asked.

“No.”

Silence. The headlights parted the darkness of the night as a comb does the hair of a bushy head.

“But you get along fine, the two of you?” he asked.

“I’ve never been in touch with him socially, so I don’t really know the man. As a matter of fact, this is the first time he and I are meeting outside the hospital grounds. He often reminds me that he’s a friend of Abshir, but then so are you.”

Bosaaso didn’t know what to make of the throw-away last phrase. Tension welled up inside him, his lungs billowing in action. The words surged out of his mouth, “What do people say about Mire?”

“They speak of his reserve, his reticence, and the nurses can’t help comparing him to the other foreign doctors who work with us at the hospital. Personally I have no difficulty imagining what he’s like deep inside, but I draw a blank when I try to think of him not working. My elder brother once described him in a letter to me as ‘the Prussian’ — in a positive sense, mind you.”

“It is interesting how the nurses perceive him,” commented Bosaaso.

“If they’re holding a loud conversation in the hospital corridor they hush on seeing Mire approach,” Duniya said. “He himself has told me that his nephews and nieces, playing noisily in their parents’ compound, fall quiet the instant they spot him.”

“So the nurses say unkind things about him?”

“Not terrible things, no.”

Bosaaso remembered how much his late wife’s mother had hated Mire. Yet Mire behaved as though none of this touched him. He was obviously at peace with himself and nothing else mattered.

Duniya volunteered, “People here are informal, no wonder he strikes some who come into contact with him as anti-social. Strange, but that isn’t how I perceive him.”

“No?”

Duniya looked at her unsteady hand which had knocked things over the very morning Bosaaso had come into her life disguised as a butterfly in a dream. She remembered how kind he had been, how touched she was by what he said. She couldn’t recall his precise words, only his kind gesture, a trace of his fondness for her.

“I perceive him as a timid man, shy like a child among adults he doesn’t know how to deal with. I’ve watched him in situations where he’s withdrawn into himself, showing nothing but his exterior self, like a turtle under attack.”

“That’s nice,” said Bosaaso, smiling and thinking aloud. “A moving description, very poetic.”

“In a letter, my brother Abshir reported to me how Mire himself had described his reticences being as prominent as the dimpled deformity of a mirror.” Why did Abshir’s name keep coming to her? Was it because of the ugly fight with her half-brother Shiriye?

Bosaaso was now slowing down. Had they already arrived? Duniya thought how much she would have loved the two of them to talk about personal matters that were of great concern to them. For instance, what about the baby? The subject of the foundling was bound to come up with Mire over dinner. She wished she had asked Bosaaso what his views were; wished she had told him hers. But he was already parked in a plot of undeveloped land alongside other vehicles, among them Mire’s Mini, which squatted midget-like next to the bigger cars.

Mire’s smile as he greeted them, Duniya thought, was the gesture of a man whom you happen to encounter at the very instant he has transferred a valuable treasure from one hiding place to another: secretive. The smile lingered, finally thinning to the size of Mire’s evenly trimmed toothbrush moustache. He stood a couple of inches shorter than Bosaaso, with a heftier physique than his childhood chum and a sonorous voice that was a delight to listen to. He now stepped aside, his posture erect, head showily bowed, his hand motioning them in saying, “Welcome.”

Entering, she thought she saw an inelegant expression on Mire’s face, of slight hesitation, of a man vacillating between two extreme moods, one formal, the other less rigid. Duniya grinned inwardly remembering another occasion when she had noticed such a sudden change of mood in him: the morning her hand ran amok, knocking over his pens, thermometers and pencils.

Bosaaso led them into the spacious living-room, which Duniya was delighted to note wasn’t extravagant. It was sparingly furnished, the decor simple, every item locally made. No loud colours, nothing the nouveaux riches associate with being chic, modern; no TV, no video machine, none of the sophisticated gadgets in which the computer age abounds, save a cassette-deck and a short-wave radio, the latter with its antenna up. Wallpaper and curtains matched harmoniously Was Bosaaso’s living-room in his two-storey palace as plain as this? Or was it distastefully exhibitionist? Duniya was delighted she had come to Dr Mire’s first.

The two friends stayed half a pace behind her, like professional waiters seating a VIP client. Reaching the sitting section of the room, Dr Mire encouraged Duniya to take the larger chair.

“Please,” he urged, guiding her gently towards the prominent armchair upholstered in green.

As yet neither of the men sat down. “To start with, what will you have, Duniya?” Mire was asking.

“Something non-alcoholic, if I may,” she replied.

Bosaaso meanwhile kept the civil distance of a head waiter, standing with hands behind his back, his whole body at the ready to be of help.

In response to their host’s list of what he could offer, Duniya said, “Orange pressé, please.”

“Certainly,” said Mire.

Suddenly there was too much movement. Mire left, walking backwards half the way, deferential. Bosaaso went to sit in the small armchair nearer Duniya. Mire halted just before entering the kitchen, did an about-turn and asked, “What will you have, Bosaaso?”

“The same as Duniya, please.”

“Keep it simple, keep it natural?” teased Mire.

Bosaaso nodded. But why wasn’t Mire leaving? Anxious, Duniya crossed, recrossed and uncrossed her legs, conscious of the eyes that were not focused on her. She was uncomfortably aware of the moisture of her armpits and the tightness of the dress at the waist. And Mire was walking away, promising to return shortly.

Alone, Bosaaso shifted closer to say, “Are you all right?”

She didn’t want to think of the immediate cause of the distress: her dress. “I’m fine, thank you,” she replied.

“Has either of us said something to upset you, Duniya?”

She wrenched her thoughts away from what had been distressing her. She said, “What have you told him about us?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Not much really.”

“That’s not telling me a lot,” she said, keeping her voice low.

“I haven’t said much to him; only generalities.”

“What about the foundling?”

“I gave him the facts as I know them,” he responded.

“Such as what? What facts?”

“I’ve told him who discovered the foundling, where and how. Those sort of facts. And how we’ve registered him in both our names, as his co-responsibles. The bare facts, no embellishments.” He paused. “Now what has upset you?”

“I hate it when men take me for granted, as a woman,” she said.

It was his turn to say, “That doesn’t tell me a lot.”

They fell silent and apart, because Mire made his well-timed entrance, clearing his throat. He approached, bearing the tray. He carefully placed a small square table-napkin before each person. Duniya thought his flat had something dry-cleaned about it. Hardly any dust anywhere. She couldn’t work out how he isolated himself and his flat from Mogadiscio’s sandstorms or the rust and weight of its humidity. She received her drink from him with both hands, saying, “Mahadsanid,” her head bowed in gratitude.

Mire served his friend, joking, “I’ve never known Bosaaso to drink anything non-alcoholic. I hope you realize what you are doing to him, Duniya.”

She said, “Special occasions impose certain restrictions on the will of those wishing to remember. Maybe that’s why he is having this sort of a drink, don’t you think?”

There was a light touch of annoyance in Mire’s voice, in the attitude of an elder brother preparing to reprimand a younger one. “You mean he’s already told you?” he said to Duniya.

“Told me? What?”

She sensed both men staring at her with engaging attentiveness. What were they talking about? Were they saying that Bosaaso had reformed and given up drinking alcohol altogether, this being an oblique reference to Taariq’s excessive use of this most poisonous substance?

Mire asked, “He hasn’t told you about Abshir?”

“My brother Abshir? What about him?” It couldn’t be bad news, since their faces opened up with smiles. “Tell me, I can’t wait.”

“It’s possible he may be coming shortly, to visit.”

She half-rose from the armchair, “Visit me?”

“That’s right.”

She felt tongue-tied, unsure how to react to the news. She would never forgive herself if she said something ridiculous, and nothing wise seemed to come to mind. She listened to the music with only half her brain, music that was consciously oriental, not Arabic. No, it had a whining tune, far eastern. She leaned forward and said eagerly, “Has he written to you, Mire, that he will come shortly?” And in her heart she hoped that Abshir hadn’t.

“He’s vacationing in Greece and met a friend of mine whom I spoke with on the telephone today — it’s my friend’s birthday. It was she who told me that he said he was planning to visit you,” said Mire.

Suddenly they were toasting, her brother’s name occurring in the brief wishes of caafimaad. Her hand unsteady, she dropped her drink and spilt some of it on her dress. She got up, in discomfort; she would have been grateful for the privacy of a bathroom, or some room with a door that she could bolt from inside. It had become difficult for her to breathe, this sudden excitement was much too much. She was hot behind her ears, her armpits wet like a peed-on mattress. Bosaaso showed her where the washroom was.

She didn’t emerge until she heard, “Dinner is served, Mada!”

Good breeding whispered in Duniya’s ears for her not to confess openly that she did not have a name for the dish she was eating, anathema to devout Muslims who insist they identify every ingredient of the foods they touch or consume. Mire was sensitive enough to suspect that Duniya’s traditional reserve might account for some of the unease on her face. However he didn’t speak either to her or Bosaaso: he looked from one to the other, hoping, maybe, that his friend would assure Duniya that she wasn’t eating pork.

Meanwhile Duniya was thinking about something that worried her: her knocking things over, spilling drinks, kicking her toes sore. The fact that this was becoming routine with her, almost boringly predictable, rankled in her mental picture of herself. Had she lost control of a certain brain nerve, causing imbalance both in mind and body? She did not like being associated with leaving falls, crashes and wreckages in her wake. Why, shapes were becoming vague in her vision. Walls at times retreated. Her hands would bend athletically at the wrist, strong like a javelin thrower’s. She reminded herself that in Somali mythology the cosmos balances on the horns of a bull, a beast that is forever staring at a cow tied to a pole right in front of him. It is said the bull’s body loses equilibrium whenever his love, the cow, turns its eyes elsewhere, and this physical shift is responsible for the earthquakes around the world. Was she, Duniya, subduing the universe by breaking things into bits?

“Do you know the name of the dish we’re eating?” Bosaaso asked.

It took time for the words to reach her mind and make sense. She felt the weight of their stares and knew she had done something that displeased them. She hadn’t touched her food. She decided to turn it to her advantage, decided to draw perverse pleasure from showing her ignorance: this usually went down well with the generality of men who received with delight any confirmation that women did not know as much as them. But it might also help her regain her misplaced self-confidence which she would then show off, like wounds sustained in a battle. She said, “What’s it called, this dish?”

“Moussaka,” said Mire.

And immediately Bosaaso interjected, “These, as you can see,” using his fork to demonstrate, “are layers of minced meat, that is aubergine, topped with a layer or two of parmesan cheese.”

Duniya then said, abrasively rubbing her recovered self-confidence, “Moussaka is such a beautiful name that I bet if the dish ever became popular in Somalia some mother would name her daughter Moussaka.” She might have been setting the future theme of a conversation on the subject of name-giving.

“Would you name your daughter Moussaka, Mire?” asked Bosaaso.

“I wouldn’t,” responded Mire, “but I am sure some women might.”

Bosaaso said to Mire, “You recall the girl in our town who was called Makiino — the bastard form of the Italian macchina? I remember thinking how weird for a mother to name her daughter after such a contraption. But, in retrospect, I can see it made sense. For one thing, the machine did the job faster and more efficiently than any person. For another, it reduced the hours of labour, minimizing exhaustion. In addition, it made the woman forward-looking, since the notion introduced her to a larger universe where machines were scientifically and culturally an integral part of one’s daily life.”

“There was this other girl, wasn’t there?” Mire said. “Her mother had named her Aasbro, do you remember? Another called her daughter Omo after the detergent powder, in recognition perhaps of the usefulness of such an item; or Lay loon, a corruption of ‘nylon,’ maybe because she had very smooth skin.”

“We know a man, don’t we, Mire,” Bosaaso said, “who presented his bottom first at birth and was given the name Daba-keen, a descriptive phrase of the breech position in which he had been bom?”

Duniya ate in silence, remembering her mother’s reasons for naming her only son Abshir. He had been a blessing, she would say, in boastful recall of how well he had done at school and university Now Abshir was planning to visit her, Abshir whom she hadn’t seen for years, whom she had last called on during a brief trip to Rome.

Mire said to her, “Do you have any idea why you were given your name? Let me tell you that I was named for my grandfather, and of course you know the story behind Bosaaso’s nickname.”

Duniya hoped Mire could see in her eyes the pleasure that news of Abshir’s arrival had given hen Self-conscious and half-choking on her emotions, she said, “I was my mother’s only daughter and the last-born, so I presume I meant the world to her.”

Bosaaso might have been a parent ladling out encouragement to a shy child. “Which is what Duniya means: the world,” he said.

“The cosmos,” said Mire, with interpretative exactitude.

Then they talked at length of traders, Arab and European, wandering the African continent, propagating their faith, making gifts of their deities and beliefs (like present-day foreign aid), presents that the Africans accepted with little question.

Bosaaso asked of no one in particular, “Can you think of a Somali concept comparable to the modern notion of cosmos, in Arabic ‘Dunya’? You see, there’s the Arab contention that they gave us the notion of cosmos by offering us not only their Islamic belief but sharing with us their world-view on which we’ve constructed our subsequent understanding of the workings of the globe.”

“What was in it for the Arabs to give us their world-view, together of course with an Allah-created cosmos, which contradicted our traditional belief systems?” asked Duniya.

Bosaaso’s face darkened as he tried to think of what to say.

“Duniya does have a point,” said Mire, “although to my mind the essential difference between African traditional beliefs and the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic credo is bound up with mystic proportions of a centrally created cosmos. The starting-point is this: who or what do we worship? In the case of the Somali who deifies crows, the answer is clear: Somalis defer to death, crows being associated with the ending of life, a termination of this existence. What the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic systems offer is a forward-looking, reward-offering, life-after-death rationalization, a credo in which you are guaranteed paradiasical delights after death.”

“What does all this mean, in plain language?” Duniya asked.

“It means,” Mire said, “that, on the surface of it at least, you invest your efforts in your daily activities of self-worship (in Judaeo-Christian as well as Islamic systems God is recreated in the image of man elevated to a higher plane, whereas in Somali thought, crows are unlike man’s idea of himself), and are promised heavenly dividends worthy of your trust in a god who gives and takes away life.”

“God gives, man gives!” Bosaaso said, not sounding very serious.

And silence fell It had become obvious to Mire that he was not making sense to Duniya, who appeared to have given up listening to his theorizations. It was time for the fruit salad.

When they had finished their dessert and the espresso coffee had been served, Duniya vanished into the bathroom for a while, in need of the quiet that comes of being alone in a room with a door to lock She also thought the two friends would appreciate a few moments to themselves in which they could lapse into their masculine idiom. In fact she had the feeling that they were like two people forced to speak in a foreign language for the benefit of a third person. After almost a whole evening of it she decided to give them a little time in which to speak in their own tongue.

From the bathroom and without undue effort Duniya was able to hear their conversation, the first half of which was mainly about the foundling, that he had not as yet been given his inoculations or a name. Bosaaso answered Mire’s questions with apparent reserve, mumbling some of his responses. At one point Mire asked, “Tell me, why are you keeping him, the two of you, I mean?”

“Who said we are keeping him?” Bosaaso replied.

“Aren’t you?” said a puzzled Mire.

“I have the impression,” explained Bosaaso, “that he is keeping us, in the sense of cementing my and Duniya’s friendship and strengthening it, day by day, minute by minute.”

“In what way?”

“The foundling has become the principal focus of our worries and pleasures, the central focus of our affections. We take care of him as though he were our own flesh and blood.”

“So what does that mean to you?” Mire asked.

“I can only speak for myself, because Duniya and I haven’t discussed this aspect of our relationship.”

“What does he mean to you personally then?”

“Until our relationship is more solid,” said Bosaaso, “and maybe even after that, the foundling will have been the symbol of our being together.”

“I’m not sure I’m with you,” Mire said.

“Look at it this way: he has been the central activity for her, me and for her children with whom I get on very well.”

“So you foresee a day soon when your relationship will take off so to speak, with no help from the foundling?” asked Mire cautiously.

“Especially now that Abshir is coming.”

“Why is that?”

Voice low, Bosaaso said, “Can we talk about it another time?”

“I see what you mean,” said Mire.

They fell silent.

Joining them, Duniya was given a tour of the flat. She was taken to Mire’s workroom, which felt quite like a hermit’s, a place where ideas were developed and where minds grew There was a chaos of books, piles and piles of them, heaped upon one another on tables, spilling off the edges of a bookcase Whereas Bosaaso had acquired two vehicles, one to give to his cousin as a taxi, the other for his own use, and in addition to a two-storey house for himself, another house for his community of cousins — Mire had invested his wealth in the acquisition of knowledge.

The workroom had its own comforts. There was a huge reclining chair, a custom-built chaise-longue, with inscriptions in German (Bosaaso explained that it was a gift from Claudia, Mire’s German woman-friend). There were lots of undusted comers in this room, and a number of half-drunk cups of coffee lying uncollected where they had been forgotten a day or so before. For Mire, Bosaaso said, the world outside his workroom had to be orderly, but not here. He couldn’t impose order on the growth of ideas. Here he was a human being; here he was not embarrassed by his own emotions.

He was private here too. There was a life-size photograph of Claudia Christ, his German woman-friend, overseeing everything in the workroom, from the vantage point where the portrait hung, high enough and in a way Duniya felt the European woman was looking into the mind of whoever stood anywhere in the room. The woman had thin lips, short hair, a tiny nose, projecting chin and prominent jaws. She made Duniya feel as if one were visiting a shrine.

Bosaaso served as her guide. He showed her translations into Somali of great European classics, including Shakespeare, Goethe and Dante, of which Mire had done drafts, with notes and introductions, each of them dedicated to Claudia. Mire translated directly from the originals, languages with which he was familiar. One day he hoped to publish this work of a lifetime.

He also pointed out Claudia Christ’s books, four of them, all in the original German and dedicated to Mire. Very noble of the woman to devote her life’s work to a man who hadn’t married her, not yet, thought Duniya.

The tour ended, she thanked Mire for a most pleasant evening and requested that she be taken home. As she left, she wondered how she was going to return Mire’s invitation. She would have to find a way of having him come for a meal at her place when it wasn’t crowded with noisy children. Her brother’s arrival would serve as a good pretext. “You must come for a meal when Abshir is here,” she said.

Eyes mischievous, Mire replied. “I hope for more than a mere meal.”

Bosaaso and Duniya were silent all the way to her place, where they noticed coming and going. Duniya didn’t encourage him to enter the house. They said their goodbyes outside. She got out of the car, but not before giving him a light kiss.

“See you tomorrow,” he said.

“Good night and thanks for everything,” she replied.

MOGADISCIO (SONNA, ANSA, 7 JANUARY)

An Italian government Aid Protocol was signed the day before yesterday at a reception held at Caruuba Hotel, Mogadiscio. The aid package has many applications to a number of development-related areas, ranging from the rehabilitation of rice-farming in Jowhar and environs, the extending of the capacity of beds of several general hospitals throughout the Republic, as well as the strengthening of relations between the two countries.

In this connection the Italian government has promised to increase the number of professors on secondment from Italian institutions of higher learning to the National University of Somalia. The Somali university is the only one outside Italy where all subjects are taught in Italian. As part of this programme, Italian scholars of Somali are helping their counterparts to complete an Italian-Somali dictionary and a linguistics project on which the team has been engaged, under the supervision of the University of Rome and of the Somali Language and Literature Academy.

The Protocol was signed by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs on behalf of Somalia and on behalf of Italy by its Charge d’Affaires.

10

In which Duniya and her three children play host to a number of visitors, including Muraayo. And as usual Bosaaso calls.

The morning was silver bright and a slight chill had blown into the room together with a dragon-fly which in fidgety movements up and down seemed to write a name in code. To read this, Duniya wiped away dewy humidity from her eyes, unsure of the result at first. The baby stirred on account of the cold wind in the Women’s Room and Duniya got out of bed to cover him with one of her guntiino-robes. When this proved insufficient, she picked him up and held him in the warmth of her embrace, cooing until he ceased to howl. She put him back in his cot and, having closed the window, returned to her bed.

Then she saw in her mind’s eye the dragon-fly’s coded writing and was confident she read a name written in tattoo-blue, fringed with water clear as ice. It was the name of the young woman Duniya had seen at the Out-patient’s Clinic on the morning Bosaaso had given her a lift in his butterfly-taxi.

She woke up, her mind cluttered with unrelated memories.

“You know, I’m serious when I say I won’t be returning to Uncle Qaasim and Aunt Muraayo’s home,” Yarey said.

Duniya hushed her nine-year-old daughter. The radio was on. They listened to the news for a while, but before long Yarey lost interest in her mother’s preoccupation with happenings in the world outside, insisting that Duniya pay heed to her.

“Did you hear what I said?” Yarey asked raucously.

Duniya wouldn’t be dissuaded from listening to an item about the Head of State receiving a combined North American and EC delegation visiting to discuss Somalia’s foreign-aid requirements. Immediately afterwards came an item about a baby boy, a couple of days old, found near a rubbish-bin in Duniya’s district. But no other details were given — only that the baby was abandoned, not even that it had been given a home and two co-responsibles, Duniya and Bosaaso.

“Will you hear me out now?” Yarey asked.

“Yes?”

“I want my things brought here, in Bosaaso’s car.”

Duniya did not like being rushed. She preferred dealing with problems one at a time. Besides it was too early for her to know what Yarey might be talking about She had too many other things on her mind, including preparing for Abshir’s visit, plus all the other matters she must talk to Nasiiba about.

“Can it wait until later, Yarey darling?” she said.

“I want my things brought here. Today.” It was a command.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to return to Uncle and Aunt’s place.”

Duniya reminded her daughter that Uncle Qaasim and Aunt Muraayo had been chosen as compromise guardians since she, Duniya, and Taariq, Yarey’s father, couldn’t agree who should keep her. Naturally they did not want to go to court. Taariq at the time was weighed down with drink-related depressions, Duniya with financial difficulties, since she couldn’t support three children on her own. As part of the understanding reached it was decided that Duniya stay on in the two-bedroom house where they now lived, paying only a token rent, and Yarey would grow up in Taariq’s elder brother’s household, considering also that his wife Muraayo hadn’t a child of her own. All this had been delicately negotiated (Duniya tried to make Yarey understand the complexities of the situation), and had taken several protracted sessions. That way, Taariq had easy access to his daughter, who spent weekends with Duniya.

“Let’s give them the foundling, that’ll solve everyone’s problem,” Yarey said.

“What problem?”

“And then I can come home.”

Duniya clucked her tongue to register her dissent. “Your returning home has nothing whatsoever to do with the foundling. That’s altogether a different matter. And as I said before, you may come back and live with us any time you like. But I’ll have to talk over the terms with your father, Uncle Qaasim and Aunt Muraayo.”

“But it’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair?”

“You see, if I come to live with you then Aunt Muraayo and Uncle Qaasim won’t have a child to consider their own, whereas there’ll be four of us children here, all yours,” Yarey reasoned.

“Your uncle has children from his previous marriages,” Duniya reminded her.

“But his current wife Aunt Muraayo won’t have them in her house.”

Duniya did not comment.

“By the time the foundling is my age, he’d have accepted Aunt Muraayo as his mother. Have you thought about that?” said Yarey insistently.

“I suggest you stay with Aunt Muraayo who’s accepted you as her own child,” Duniya said, her tone teasing, cajoling. But no sooner had she uttered it than she wished she had not.

“You mean you prefer him to me?” Yarey said.

“God forbid, no.”

“Why’s this ugly foundling so important to you?” challenged Yarey.

“He has no other home, you have at least two. Be fair, Yarey.”

“Yesterday you had a nasty fight with Uncle Shiriye over him.” Yarey went on in a hostile tone, “And now you say these cruel things to me, your own daughter. Why is he so important?”

In a moment’s concentrated rush, it dawned on Duniya that there was a way to pacify Yarey She would set the young girl a baited trap. She would make her feel important, confide in her.

“Are you big enough to keep a secret to yourself, Yarey?”

“Of course I am,” said Yarey, all ears.

“Can I trust you not to tell Nasiiba or Mataan or anyone else?”

“Sure!”

Duniya said, “Uncle Abshir is coming shortly.”

Yarey couldn’t contain her joy. “When?”

Pleased that she could manipulate the mercurial moods of her youngest daughter, Duniya said, “I’m not sure exactly when.”

“Have you had a telegram or letter from him?”

“A friend of Dr Mire’s had breakfast with him yesterday,” Duniya volunteered. “You’ve never met, Abshir and you, have you?”

“No, never.”

“You’ll have to keep this a secret though.”

“I will,” promised Yarey.

Meanwhile Yarey had completely forgotten about the foundling or her plans that they be swapped. She was bubbling over with excitement.

“Do you think there’s still time for you to write to him before he comes?” she wanted to know.

“Why?”

“Because I want him to bring me something from Italy.”

“I don’t know about that,” Duniya wasn’t encouraging.

“That Somali Airlines stewardess what’s-her-name can take a letter to him. Let’s find out when she’s flying to Rome and we’ll give her a letter or something, a message.”

Duniya’s body stiffened at the reference to the stewardess.

“What’s wrong?” Yarey inquired.

“What would you like Uncle Abshir to bring you from Italy?” Duniya said, frowning.

“I want a Walkman.”

Duniya smiled limpidly. “Well try to get a message to him.”

“And there’s something else,” Yarey was too thrilled to be still.

Patience diminishing, Duniya asked, “Something he can carry easily through customs?”

“A filmcalled ET.”

“A film?”

“A video, then I can watch it on Bosaaso’s machine.”

“We’ll try to reach him somehow.”

“Promise?”

“And you promise not to talk about his coming to a living soul?”

Yarey nodded.

“If you don’t keep your end of the deal, I won’t keep mine,” said Duniya.

“I will,” said Yarey. “I’m grown-up now.”

Nasiiba, who had just showered, entered the room. When Yarey and her mother kept conspiratorially quiet, Nasiiba suspected they had been discussing her. Otherwise why would both avoid eye-contact with her? She looked from her young sister to her mother, from her mother to the foundling and then finally at the radio, which was jabbering on, but words failed her. And Duniya said girlishly to Yarey “Shall we go and shower together?”

“That’ll be fun, Duniya,” said Yarey.

They left the room, convincing Nasiiba that either they had been talking about her or knew something they wouldn’t share with her.

After showering, which they both enjoyed, Duniya borrowed Mataan’s room to change. In the mirror her face looked soft like the earth after spring rains: brown, whole, supple. For a while she listened to the young people’s chatter in the courtyard: Mataan, Marilyn and her friend and another whose voice she couldn’t place. Nasiiba and Yarey were feeding the baby The curtains drawn, the door bolted from inside, with enough sunlight to see herself in the looking-glass, Duniya took a studied interest in her body for the first time in many years. And what she saw depressed her.

She had neglected her own body while she took care of others’ physical needs, as a nurse, as mother of three children, and now as co-guardian of a foundling. She hadn’t realized she had grown so fat that she had a belt of it round her waist.

Somali men are said to be turned on by the mound of flesh round a woman’s navel. But what kind of women did Bosaaso like? Did he prefer them slim, young-bodied, with not an extra ounce anywhere? For a woman of her age and background, Duniya knew her body was still in good shape. Surely, she thought, it wasn’t a body to turn up one’s nose at. It had served her faithfully all these years, giving of itself all it possibly could, and it had known only two men, one of them sixty-odd years old. In the two years she had been Zubair’s wife, they could not have made love more than thrice a month. Yet she had not felt sexually dissatisfied; most traditional couples did not make love often, and no one made such a big deal about sex anyway.

Her second husband Taariq wanted it nightly Nor did the calendar of her period deter him from demanding that she oblige. However his stamina was short-lived and he came at the very point when she started to climb the ladder of her own sexual pleasure. When he was drunk, she would push him away like an infant breast-feeding playfully He would without a fuss fall asleep, snoring instantly so she would have to shake him awake in order to have a quiet night.

By leaps of logic she found herself considering the women Bosaaso had known, who might have left indelible influences on him. His mother. The Afro-American with whom he had cohabited for several years. And Yussur. Duniya made a mental note to find out as much as she could about these women, not as rivals, just as people. Would Nasiiba know anything about the Afro-American, Nasiiba who knew such things?

Getting into a dress belonging to what Duniya referred to as one of Nasiiba’s moods (Nasiiba had the expensive habit of buying clothes she never wore, dresses bought when they took her fancy and which she then forgot), she now felt let down by her own weakness. Why, she had never thought the day would come when she, Duniya, would rack her brain about male likes and dislikes or would dress to please a man! She was being silly falling in love and admitting it; stupid borrowing a dress of Nasiiba’s when the one she had worn the night before had made her feel so uncomfortable, tight at the waist, itchy and moist at the armpits.

Someone was knocking on the door. Urgently.

“Who is it?”

“Open the door, Mummy.”

“What is it?”

“Open and I’ll tell you.” Nasiiba was breathless as though all the jinns in the cosmos had formed themselves into a union to chase her to this door.

“What is it, Naasi? Tell me,” Duniya said, opening the door.

“It’s about the baby.”

For a moment Duniya couldn’t think whom she meant. “What baby?”

“The foundling.”

“What about him?”

And Duniya remembered the name of the young woman whom she had seen at the Out-patient Clinic — Number Seventeen. Fariida was the girl’s name. Sister to the Somali Airlines stewardess whom Yarey had wanted to contact so she would take a letter to Abshir. Heavens, what complications!

Duniya told her daughter to calm herself, “Whatever it is you have to say, remember the universe is two hundred million years old and won’t come to an end before you’ve spoken your piece. Now what’s bothering you?”

“Muraayo is here,” said Nasiiba, chest palpitating with anxiety.

Duniya was not moved by this news. She turned, asking Nasiiba to zip up the back of her dress. This done, Duniya walked over to the standing-mirror to take an appreciative look at herself. She was amazed she had accomplished all this without tripping or knocking things over in clumsy gestures of lost equilibrium. Then: “Now why should Muraayo’s being here frighten you so?”

“It’s about the foundling.”

Duniya calmed herself down. “What about the foundling?”

“Promise you won’t give away the foundling to Muraayo?”

Duniya decided that Yarey had been naughty and had threatened not to return to Muraayo’s household but to stay here where, because of Bosaaso and the baby a lot of late-night fun was taking place, more than at Uncle Qaasim’s. “Why shouldn’t we give the foundling to Muraayo?” she said to Nasiiba.

“He’s not meant for them,” Nasiiba said.

“I may not be the most intelligent woman in the world, but I’m not that stupid and none of what you’ve said so far makes any sense to me.” Duniya paused. “Tell me, when did you last see Fariida?”

Nasiiba acted strangely, looking about suspiciously as though Fariida were hiding in the shadows of the darkened room. Then she swallowed hard, and her eyes popped as if she had by mistake eaten her own Adam’s apple. She recovered quickly enough to say in her characteristically defiant way, “What has Fariida got to do with what we’re talking about?”

“You’re the one who found the baby,” said Duniya. “Not me.”

Duniya could sense because of Nasiiba’s stillness of breath she had hit a target. But the feeling lasted only briefly. What made her feel triumphant was that it was Nasiiba who knocked her great toe on Mataan’s doorsill, not Duniya.

“Tell Aunt Muraayo I’ll be with her in a moment,” said Duniya.

Fariida: the mother of the foundling? Who was the father then?

Muraayo gave Duniya a light kiss on the cheeks and a cursory embrace. She was a huge woman, standing five foot nine and nearly twice as wide as Nasiiba. Her bare arms were of the enormous size that filled the sex-starved fantasies of some Somali men. She had very shiny, dark skin, and frequently went to her favourite coiffeuse to have her hair done in different styles, wearing it uncovered. She called at the tailor’s just as often, never failing to bring him fashion magazines from which to copy, in the belief that her dresses resembled no one else’s in Mogadiscio. With equal enthusiasm and panache, Muraayo visited silversmiths and goldsmiths with whom she haggled relentlessly so she would receive favourable trade-ins for her wares. Muraayo’s build was such that people stepped aside, willing to surrender to her as much space as she wished to take. What was more, people simply couldn’t help obeying her commands.

The twins did not like it that she treated them as though they were infants. Mataan, with unusual frankness, had once said, “Aunt Muraayo pampers her huge body with an overdose of self-adulation.” In Nasiiba’s opinion “to think of Muraayo is to recall fiery moods and self-indulgence.” Duniya concurred with both her children, adding that Muraayo was a woman to have as a friend, not an enemy.

Duniya and the twins had known her in the days when she had been slim, just married to Qaasim, Taariq’s elder brother. A life-force, that was how Duniya described her then. Muraayo had emanated womanhood. When a number of years went by without her being blessed with a pregnancy, this did not bother or sadden the couple. She was supposed to have said that her husband Qaasim had as many children as he was likely to want. “What I give him is what his former wives never offered him: life and love.” No one doubted her word. It was also a known fact that the walls of their house cracked with the primeval screams of their love-making, thereby giving birth to the gossip that one of her neighbours described the whole thing as a fake show, meaning that Muraayo wasn’t enjoying love-making but acting. Some of these women wondered if she was not infibulated.

Some of the men thought of Qaasim as a cuckold; for it was said that Muraayo had the habit of entertaining male visitors in the wing of the house furthest from the main entrance and in which their bedrooms were, when her husband was not at home.

Muraayo now pinched Duniya’s cheeks in the Italian style, using the middle joints of the index and middle fingers. And as she effected this with elegance she said, “And what have we here, Duniya dear? A small foundling, retrieved from a rubbish-bin, already famous enough to be a news item on the radio’s morning bulletin. Imagine? And what else have we here?” Words emerged from Muraayo’s mouth with the speed of a newscaster running short of time and so cutting and improvising all at once. “A new dress, Duniya, all peacock feathers, figure excellent, every hair in place, plus flowers in the hair. Quite a finished job! A union sealed? Have you already taken the vows till death pull you assunder and all that?”

Duniya racked her mind to work out the meaning of all that Muraayo was saying. She was obviously talking about Bosaaso and the baby But what about the flower in the hair? Where was such a flower? In whose hair?

Muraayo then said, “How are you anyway? Happy?”

“We are well, thank you.”

“But there is a man after all these years, Duniya, a man — my God, what is happening to you?” Annoyingly, Muraayo wouldn’t let her say anything, speaking as fast as she did, and non-stop. “I mean: are you happening, Duniya dear, in the sense of burgeoning into a late blossom of a woman-flower — love and love, imagine — is that what we are witnessing the beginnings of, my dear?”

Bracing herself, Duniya said, “Would you like to sit down and make your statements from the comfort of an armchair?” And she was pleased she could talk just as fast as Muraayo and still make sense. Would she be able to keep pace with Muraayo’s accelerated jabber?

“I’ve been here quite a while,” said Muraayo.

Now what did that mean? Trouble? Did Muraayo feel offended, being made to wait for Duniya to join her, while the younger ones were busy with one another and the foundling?

“Come and have some tea,” suggested Duniya. “It will calm our nerves.” She knew she would have to take hold of the reins of the conversation lest it get out of hand. She never liked the drift of Muraayo’s chatter but somehow was able to control its ebb and flow, and if need be turn its tide anywhere she pleased.

“No tea,” Muraayo said, her tone that of an annoyed child.

Yarey readied to go to the general store, a few hundred metres away, to get Aunt Muraayo a soft drink of her choice. It was not lost on anyone that at Muraayo’s place no one went out to get an ice-cold soda or something from a retail shop, but to one of three fridges, whereas at Duniya’s there was no fridge. For such services as keeping drinks chilled the owner of the general store charged a little extra.

“Don’t go anywhere, Yarey,” commanded Muraayo. “I haven’t seen you for almost twenty-four hours and don’t want you out of my eyes. Let someone else get a Coke for me or whatever they have chilled.”

Nasiiba told Mataan to go and get it; Nasiiba who felt that a lot was at stake that might affect the foundling’s future. Duniya noted in her mind that Nasiiba hadn’t spoken a single word since their encounter in Mataan’s room, when the young woman had been incapable of responding to the question about whether she had seen Fariida, Fariida whom Duniya imagined to be the abandoned baby’s mother.

Something was happening. Was the baby happening? The atmosphere was getting heavier and heavier. Not since the morning Shiriye called had Nasiiba known a half-hour so tense. Marilyn and her companion, another girl, both felt redundant and left; their hostess, Nasiiba, did not even see them to the door. Duniya sensed that her house was emptying like a town fearing to be sacked.

No one said anything until Mataan returned with Muraayo’s cold drink. Delivering it as though he were ducking a bullet meant for someone else, he too left for the securer shelter of his room, whose door he pushed half-shut. Yarey stayed because Muraayo wouldn’t let go of her hand, whereas Nasiiba remained not only because she felt that the foundling’s destiny was at stake, but also because (she would say later) she adored family quarrels of this kind. Nasiiba switched off the radio at some point and the baby did not stir.

After taking a sip of her Coke, Muraayo said, “Fancy finding a foundling near a rubbish-bin. Other people find treasures or other forms of pot luck. Not you, Duniya. You find a baby, a live one, healthy, unclaimed, in a basket, already waiting to be brought home, pampered with love and put on display. The story has a Moses-touch to it, almost myth-like, don’t you think?”

Duniya didn’t say anything.

Muraayo went on, sounding triumphant, showing off, reminding everyone that she was educated. “When a nation is going through a crisis similar to ours, God produces a trump-card of a miracle and he plays it into the hands of someone whom He chooses for that purpose. Is this foundling a baby born to save the Somali nation from imminent disaster? Fancy, in addition to finding a baby, fancy unearthing a man, at your age, Duniya, an Idris come down in his chariot, one of the best of his kind, an American-educated Bosaaso, prosperous as the green currency of which he is rumoured to have plenty. Fancy that, Duniya dear — wealth, education and a foundling, all at a single stroke. What a sweep of fortune; the tarot cards will carry a bust of you from now on, I assure you.”

Muraayo held her audience captive, confident that she could get away with anything. Duniya was the nervous one, because she was thinking to herself that maybe Muraayo knew the father of the foundling, a hand she would play when and only when pressed. Who might the father be?

Presently Muraayo was saying, “Yarey has told me she wishes to remain here with you and wants all her things brought from our house. Have you been told that?”

Nasiiba shifted in her chair, excited as if watching a cock-fight.

Duniya was calm. “I don’t share Yarey’s opinion and I told her so when we spoke about it earlier this morning. Well have to talk, I’ve explained to her, Taariq her father, Uncle Qaasim, you, well have to sit round a table and discuss it.”

Muraayo took a tighter grip of Yarey’s wrist to whom she turned and said, “Now why would you want to leave us and come here?”

There was pain on Yarey’s face; the little thing did not speak.

“Haven’t we been kind to you? Haven’t we treated you like our child?”

“You’ve always been kind to her,” Duniya said.

“Let the girl speak for herself,” Muraayo said to Duniya.

Duniya’s face wore a tawdry expression, threadbare rags of anger, but she let it pass unchallenged, saving her guns for other matters of greater strategic significance.

Muraayo made Yarey stand apart from everybody, like an errant pupil being questioned by a teacher insisting that she confess a wrongdoing. It was humiliating to Duniya, but she bore it.

Muraayo said, “Have Qaasim and I not given you all the love you require? Have Qaasim and I not bought you all the modern toys you fancied and more? Haven’t we bought you whatever you demanded?” And so on and so on. Give. Buy. Receive. Grateful. Key words to do with giving and receiving. What had the little girl to do with all this?

Yarey nodded silently.

And then Muraayo said, “Do you realize that here, at Duniya’s, there’s no TV, no video, and you won’t have a room of your own, not even a bed you can call yours, only a collapsible one that tucks away under someone else’s, a bed bought second-hand, which gathers dust under a bedroll in an overcrowded comer, not fit for human habitation, but beasts!”

Duniya said, “All right, Muraayo, that’s enough!”

Muraayo turned to her, staring, as if she didn’t understand her. “Enough what? When you don’t talk to your silly, ungrateful girl and make her see sense, Duniya?”

“You’ve said more than my patience will tolerate,” Duniya said, “certainly more than my pride will accept.”

“The poor thing doesn’t know what’s good for her,” delivering this in a breathlessly hyphenated tone of voice, as if the statement were one single long-winded word.

“I won’t discourage my daughter from wanting to come home to me.

Muraayo disregarded Duniya’s comment, saying to Yarey, “You’ve been our daughter for almost six of your nine years, haven’t you?”

Yarey nodded.

Now Muraayo turned to Nasiiba. “And you and your twin-brother: do you remember that Qaasim and I gave you a place and a home when your mother went away on a few months’ refresher course to Ghana, when her own brother Shiriye wouldn’t have you? And this was long before we were related by marriage, long before Taariq married her?”

Nasiiba remained unmoved.

Addressing no one in particular, Muraayo continued her monologue: “Children don’t mean much to me but a house without a child is a place in which ghosts and jinns congregate.” Then to Yarey, “You’ve mattered to me because I watched you grow right before my eyes and I would like you to have the opportunities of being educated abroad, in the USA or Canada.”

Duniya said, irritated, “You’re doing it again, Muraayo.”

“What am I doing?” asked Muraayo, puzzled.

“Let’s talk of something else, change the subject. As it is you’re offending my sensibilities and my self-esteem. ‘We can offer you this, we can give you America and Canada on a tray, and the world’s TV, video and toys at the push of a button.’ That’s no way to speak to my daughter.”

“How do you want me to speak to her?” Muraayo sat up.

“I suggest we change the subject.”

“Whether you like it or not, Yarey knows who bought her the clothes she’s wearing this very instant!” Muraayo said bitterly.

Duniya was shocked beyond recognition. Her mouth opened, only to make an O sound, then her lips pouted, speechless. She had unseeing eyes, hollowed out like key-holes. Duniya’s self-control was amazing today, decided Nasiiba. “I suggest we postpone talking about all this till we’re in a more receptive mood.”

“There is nothing to talk about or to postpone,” Muraayo said.

“In the meanwhile well both have spoken to Taariq, the girl’s father and Qaasim her uncle and your husband, since they too have a stake in this. Let’s not insult each other any more.”

Muraayo scratched her head cautiously with a fingernail. As she did so, everyone could see her hairy armpit. Duniya thought about Somali women growing armpit and pubic hair — features of modern times. Amen!

“I want the foundling, then,” said Muraayo, in keeping with her habit of never making any commonplace demands.

“What did you say?” asked Duniya incredulously.

“Either Yarey or the foundling.” It was not a request politely spoken, but a command in an either/or tone. And mortals like Duniya had no choice but to obey such orders.

“I have to consult the foundling’s co-responsible.”

“Who is that?” wondered Muraayo.

“Bosaaso,” said Duniya, drawing delight out of saying the name.

There was an odd mixture of sarcasm and bitterness in Muraayo’s voice. “So that’s who he is, the man who is happening in your life, making ours impossible to live.”

“What do you mean?” Duniya said.

“Never mind,” Muraayo said, dismissively.

The silence was a strain on everyone’s nerves, save Muraayo, who sat majestically confident, overspilling with the noises her bangles, silver and gold-bracelets made. Nasiiba’s eyes lit with a wicked grin. Mataan had come too and stood on the periphery, with the air of a football fan watching a cup-final. Yarey had plonked herself beside Nasiiba, sharing her armchair. The children, in short, remained quiet and conspiratorial as if they secretly knew what was about to happen.

Muraayo stammered uncharacteristically sayings “All I meant to point out to you is that raising four children will present you with a heavy financial burden unless this Bosaaso man is willing to give you a hand. Let’s face it, you can’t even meet all Yarey’s expensive tastes.”

Duniya was too annoyed to respond.

“I know Yarey can’t be without her video and TV,” Muraayo continued.

Yarey said, “Uncle Bosaaso has a more sophisticated video-machine.” No sooner was it said than she realized she had annoyed her mother. She hid her head behind Nasiiba.

“Remember too that this house in which you live virtually rent-free belongs to my husband,” boasted Muraayo. “Be reasonable, Duniya. Use your head. Either give me the foundling or let Yarey come back with me right now.”

Duniya got up, hotly. She did not know what was coming out of her mouth. She said: “We’ll keep the foundling in order to give him to you, how about that?”

With a superior air, Muraayo said, “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does to me,” argued Duniya.

“What about Yarey?”

Duniya’s eyes were aflame with rage she could no longer contain. “Get up on your heavy, fat feet, Muraayo,” she said, standing as if preparing to fight it out, woman to woman, fist to fist.

Muraayo stood up, perplexed.

The twins moved towards each other and Yarey joined them, forming a three-person club of spectators to applaud their mother. It was as if Duniya and Muraayo were two little girls quarrelling over the ownership of a doll, which they would tear apart, limb from limb, until it was no longer a doll but something else, something much bigger, placed on a symbolic level.

“Do you know where the door is?” asked Duniya, still calm.

Muraayo was not intimidated; she stared at Muraayo, daring her to take the next step.

“I want you leave this instant, Muraayo, and fast too.”

“You’ll regret this.”

“I’ve heard enough nonsense for one day,” said Duniya, “Leave.”

Muraayo said, “You’re not a good mother to your own daughter.” She pointed to the girl’s chin. “Look at this. It’s eczema. Yarey’s been here only twenty-four hours and her skin-irritation has returned. You call yourself a nurse. Why don’t you apply the medicine the girl brought with her? You have no time for her, only for the new man in your life and the foundling.”

Duniya shouted, “Get out, of here, out of my sight!”

“This is my husband’s house,” Muraayo stood her ground, defiant.

“I’m the tenant and I have the right to throw you out,” Duniya threatened.

“Wait until I tell Qaasim what you’ve done to me.”

To everyone’s surprise, including hers, Duniya said, “Give Qaasim my compliments and tell him to find a new tenant for this place. We’ll be moving out shortly” And suddenly Duniya knew who the foundling’s father was. She didn’t know how she arrived at her conclusion, but she knew it.

Speechless, Muraayo let go of Yarey’s hand and left.

Then Duniya ripped open her dress, as though she were a person who was now sane, breaking the manacles of her insanity. Yarey and the twins sat in silence, sharing one armchair, and holding hands.

The whole place was electric with tension. Everyone stayed out of Duniya’s way The foundling kept quiet, fed well, slept. He didn’t wake or cry even when Nasiiba had switched off the radio.

And Duniya? She had her feet up literally, contemplating her toes. Not alive to the world, not paying it attention, she stayed where she was, silent, thinking. She felt relieved. She knew she would have had to move out of Qaasim’s house sooner or later. The problems confronting her now that she had served the quit order on herself were of a different nature: she must find a place soon enough, to welcome Abshir into.

Somebody prayed, O God, let Bosaaso come! Then they heard panning feet, light as raindrops on zinc-sheeting. Nasiiba said, “Here he is, in plimsolls, jogging,” and they all waited. When he came in, they felt like soldiers who were relieved to learn they were among friends at last. They welcomed Bosaaso and started to tell him in whispers everything that had passed. He looked in Duniya’s direction like someone waylaid by bandits, but he remained with the children. Nasiiba urged Mataan to tell them a Juxaa-story. Both Yarey and Bosaaso encouraged him too, with Nasiiba adding that Duniya would also love to hear one.

A hunter who was an acquaintance of Juxaa’s one day brought him a pheasant as a present, which Juxaa’s wife prepared for the two men. A couple of months later a man unknown either to Juxaa or his wife knocked on their door. “Who are you?” they asked the man.

“I am a friend of your acquaintance, the hunter,” the man introduced himself, “who gave you a pheasant as a present which your wife prepared and on whose meat the three of you feasted.”

Juxaa and his wife welcomed the man in and they fed him generously The visitor left, promising to let the hunter know that a feast had been given him in his honour.

A few weeks went by and another man knocked on Juxaa’s door. To the question “Who are you?” the man responded that he was a neighbour of the friend to Juxaa’s acquaintance, the hunter, who had brought them a pheasant as a gift, upon which they had all feasted.

“Welcome,” said Juxaa to the man, letting him in.

Half an hour later Juxaa placed before the man a very large cauldron, with the lid still on. When the man removed the cover, he discovered to his surprise that there was nothing in the large pot, except water, turning and boiling hot. “What’s the meaning of this?” inquired the caller.

Juxaa said, “The bubbling water before you has been boiled in the very cauldron as the pheasant that my acquaintance, the hunter, has presented us with; what is more the cauldron is the same pot in which your friend’s food has been cooked. Welcome. Eat.”

Saying nothing, the man left Juxaa’s house.

Half an hour later, Duniya sat alone in the armchair where they had left her. A voice was urging her to get up, go to the foundling’s cot and find out why it hadn’t stirred for so long. But another voice, equally convincing, was encouraging her to concentrate on the handsomeness of an eagle flying high in the heavens and refusing to land anywhere. And this second dreamy voice said, “The foundling has done whatever it came into this life to achieve. It arrived unheralded and will probably leave unannounced. A mythical child, if you like,” the voice went on. It did not sound at all like Bosaaso, more like Nasiiba. “A baby whose beginning shared the timelessness of fables, expiring in the inexactness of legends. Think of Moses in a bullrush basket floating down a river, think of miracle babies, think of myths,” the voice concluded.

But I want to get up! Duniya said to herself, although she hadn’t the urge within her to stand up. It was as if a weight heavier than she was holding her down, forbidding her to rise.

Then a dragon-fly alighted on the tip of her nose.

But Duniya was too sleepy to chase the dragon-fly away She thought she heard a knock on the outside door, and maybe someone stumbling in. Or was that the noise of the foundling moving in its cot? Duniya saw an eagle descend, watched it enter the baby’s room, saw it emerge, holding clasped in its beak as it flew out towards the heavens not a baby but a dragon-fly.

Everything was so dreamy and still, Duniya thought she too was not among the living.

11

In which Taariq and Qaasim call on Duniya. Mire comes to call later in the afternoon.

Duniya woke up to a cabalistic quietness in which she was not sure if she imagined Taariq’s voice asking if she would like a cup of tea. But what about the foundling? And where was Taariq? For a sleepy instant, everything was real as a dream being dreamt.

Noises came from the kitchen: a kettle being rinsed, then filled with tap water; matches being struck, gas flames smelling blue and nauseating. Someone was pacing up and down, whistling. These hints strengthened her suspicion that Taariq had come, that it was his voice she had heard. She arched her back, her neck a little stiff. She had fallen asleep in an armchair just outside Mataan’s room, as if guarding his door. She had his bicycle-chain in one hand and the dress Nasiiba had given her in the tight grip of the other. She must have fallen into the shallow well of siesta just as Bosaaso and the others left. Again, the question: what about the baby?

She would ask Taariq to take a look, she thought drowsily.

He had visibly aged since she last set eyes on him, only God knew how long ago. Now he looked like a man at peace with himself. A mutual friend by the name of Cige, himself an excellent journalist, one of Somalia’s best, had once said to Duniya, “No sight is uglier than a journalist not writing any more. All that unemployed energy is so sad. It’s like a river running to sand, wasting itself.” Cige and Taariq and Duniya had been standing in front of the government printing press where the country’s only daily newspaper, Xiddigta Oktooher, was printed. Duniya had gone to seek Taariq’s assurances that Yarey would not be made to undergo the torture of infibulation. Both Qaasim and Muraayo had given their word, but Duniya wanted to be absolutely certain. Only that morning Hibo had brought to the hospital her youngest daughter who had been circumcised without her knowledge by her visiting mother-in-law, Gallayr’s mother. To set Duniya’s mind at rest, Taariq pointed out that Muraayo had not herself suffered such an amputation. Her worries allayed, she accepted that Yarey stay on in Uncle Qaasim’s and Muraayo’s household.

At last the meaning of the noise became clear, as Taariq arrived carrying a tray of tea and a jug of cold water from the clay water-pot. Awake, Duniya saw him hesitate, wondering where to place the tray. Suddenly she lumbered to her feet, Ml of energy. This filled him with vitality too. Duniya took in all that met her eyes, noting the state of disrepair the house was in — was it appropriate that she quit without giving consideration to that? Nothing to regret, she told herself, no sins to repent. The floors would be whitewashed, the walls too; all would be well.

He had found a low table for the tray, and said, “Where has everyone gone? Where are the children?”

Marriage is one way of forming ugly or good habits. Taariq knew her preferences; he knew how she liked her tea, how much sugar she took, that she seldom drank it with milk. She also noticed he had brought her a jugful of water so she could get rid of the taste of sleep. He poured out two cups of tea.

She took a mouthful of water, gargled, then spat. She wasn’t sure if it was sleep or blood that she tasted in her saliva as she gargled. She rinsed her face with the cold water, then sat down. No formalities between them. On second thoughts, she wished she had done all this gargling and face-washing in the privacy of her bathroom. She felt self-conscious suddenly, as though her behaviour was something picked up from constant association of late with Bosaaso.

“The girls have gone to a film, I don’t know where,” she said.

“Do you know what they’ve gone to see?”

“Nosferatu. I think that’s what Nasiiba said.”

“Not Profumo di Donna?”

Duniya pondered. She remembered seeing and liking it in Rome in the original, with Abshir. She was sure the girls had not gone to watch Profumo di Donna at a friend’s. But they were civil with each other even in their disagreements, not tearing into each other out of a sheer desire to pick faults, as they had done the last seven months of their marriage. He took a sip of his tea.

“And Mataan?”

“Bosaaso asked him to keep him company.”

He was silent, which afforded her time to take a closer look at him. He had come dressed for the occasion, in a faultlessly ironed shirt, decent trousers, with a belt — imagine Taariq wearing a belt! And he had proper shoes, with matching socks. She had known him to wear odd socks, his shirt buttons to be of different sizes, shapes and origin. And his eyes were open, and he was no longer dwelling in the mistiness of his drunken stupor.

Duniya reminded herself that he had abandoned drinking and smoking, and was writing and publishing again. God, whatever had happened to her Taariq! Waving her hands in front of her, as if removing a web her imagination had woven in front of her, Duniya asked, “Why are you here, Taariq?”

“I’ve come to visit you,” he said.

“You have always been a liar, Taariq.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Has Muraayo anything to do with this unexpected visit of yours?”

“Probably.”

“Am I right to assume that you are heralding Qaasim’s visit later today?”

“That’s right.”

All this time, her hands were caressing the kettle’s spout. She filled her cup to the brim; he extended his towards her and she poured more into his too. “So you’ve come because two women — one your former wife, the other your current sister-in-law — had what might be called a woman’s fight? You’ve come,” she raised her hand in the gesture of someone not wanting to be interrupted, “you’ve come, wise and male, because two stupid women have had a petty fight. I’m afraid you’re late. These women have done whatever damage they are capable of. Your tardy arrival as the wise male mediator of women’s irrational quarrels will not mend things either.”

He said nothing. He knew well not to interfere with the smooth flow of her talk. She had her temper and he knew this was no time to speak. He waited.

“As it happens,” she continued, “my father did the same, years ago when his two wives, one of them my mother, the other Shiriye’s, were involved in a fight of which he was the cause, and in which one of them was hurt. My father came, as wise men do, late after the event. He came to instruct the two women to shake hands in front of him and other male witnesses. Make peace, he commanded. Shake hands, he ordered. Shut your mouths, he instructed.”

Taariq remained still and silent. “I’ve learned to be suspicious of men presenting themselves as peace-makers between women,” Duniya went on, “when they, the men, are the cause of the quarrel, the initiators of the enmity and rivalry between women-folk. Tell me then, Taariq, my dear former husband and father of my youngest daughter whom I love dearly, tell me why you are here.”

“Actually, I’ve come to see the foundling, out of curiosity.”

“I don’t believe you,” Duniya challenged him.

“As if you ever have.”

Turning away, she said, “Get on with it then. See him and be off.”

“I’ve already seen him.”

“You have?”

Taariq nodded. “He’s asleep.”

“Does he look like anyone you know?” she asked.

“It’s much too early to be able to tell accurately.”

“Have you taken a good look at him?” she asked.

“Asleep, with his fists covering part of his face, as though he were defending himself against a coming blow. Yes, I took as good a look as I could, in the circumstances.”

“Why?”

“Answer my question first, Duniya.”

“Go on and ask.”

“Whom should he look like?”

“Tell me why you took a thorough look at him and I’ll tell you whom he’s said to resemble,” Duniya bargained.

“I’m a journalist and the foundling was a news item this morning, so it’s professional interest on my part,” Taariq justified himself.

She decided Taariq did not suspect that Qaasim may have fathered the foundling. Or was she herself in fact wrong in assuming that, since all Nasiiba had said was: the baby is not meant for them, meaning Muraayo and Qaasim.

He said, “Do you remember saying more than once that most men have no idea how to react to babies before the newly-born’s faces break with smiles of paternal recognition?”

“I don’t recall saying that precisely but the words carry my stamp.”

“Well, today I’ve met two men who’ve been affected by the foundling’s presence here in your house: Qaasim and Shiriye.”

“It’s Qaasim who interests me, not Shiriye. What did Qaasim have to say?”

“We were in the living-room when Muraayo returned, after your fight. You know how she is, a river of words breaking at the banks, regardless of the seasons. Well, she abandoned us in the middle of a swamp of words. I, for one, could hardly grasp what the quarrel was all about. Of course, the aspects of the fight regarding Yarey were clear enough, but nothing she said about the foundling made any sense to me. I had heard of a baby being found near a rubbish-bin, but the radio didn’t say who had given the foundling a home. Then Qaasim interrogated her about the baby in such an intimate way, he got me interested. Who had brought the baby home? Who was there at your place? Did Muraayo know any of the young girls at Duniya’s? Was there a young woman, Nasiiba’s age, who was minding the baby as well? Muraayo remembered a girl Nasiiba’s age helping with the baby Sitting up, very alert, Qaasim asked for her name. Only when Muraayo gave the girl’s name as Marilyn did he begin to relax. But by then, I was hooked, and I had to come.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing Qaasim,” Duniya said.

“Who is this Marilyn?” Taariq asked.

“She isn’t the baby’s mother, if that’s what you think.”

He shook his head. “I mean, does this Marilyn have a grandmother called Maryam and do they live in this neighbourhood? If you don’t jump the gun, but give me a straight answer, I’ll tell you a story.”

“I love stories,” Duniya said.

He decided to go in quest of her good-will and talked about the night she threw him out of the house, sodden drunk and sleepy. This was the first time he had talked about it.

“I fell asleep in the shade of a tree,” he said, “not knowing if it were day or night, when out of the silver brightness of a full moon, the figure of an old woman bearing the gift of a blanket emerged. She covered me with it, tucking me in like a motherless baby. But she didn’t leave me all that night. She sat by, on a low stool, guarding me against thieves and dogs whom she shooed away whenever they approached. You see, when I woke the next morning, I had a vague recollection of an old woman’s voice telling a young girl whom she called by the unusual name of Marilyn to go back to sleep, because there would be school on the morrow.”

“Did you ever meet the old woman?”

“For weeks afterwards, I would come in a borrowed car, park within sight of the family door, hoping to see her, thank her and return the blanket. When I had mustered enough courage, I knocked on the door and asked if there was a woman who would meet my drunken description of her or a young girl called Marilyn. The man of the house reacted negatively both to my visit and my queries, telling me to leave. You won’t believe it, but I still have the blanket, as a souvenir by which to remember the night you threw me out.” There was no bitterness in his memory of the night.

“It must be the same old woman,” Duniya said.

“How come she’s in your life too?”

“She turned up one morning, to offer us the loan of a young maid, to help us look after the foundling,” Duniya explained. “She came first, solitary like Khadr, a genuine comfort. Come to think of it, I used to see the old woman off and on. It’s such a pleasure to know them, they are such delightful company, she and Marilyn. They arrive at all sorts of odd hours, to mind the baby They get along well with everyone, the two of them, including Bosaaso, co-responsible of the foundling.”

Taariq was now jittery, unable to decide which of the many strands worked into his or Duniya’s yarn he should pursue. He had an orderly mind, in which thoughts were instantly catalogued, given a subheading, ideas were divided into paragraphs as if he were writing them down in a systematic order. Working another strand into the yarn already spun, Taariq said, “Shiriye, who was at Qaasim’s today, thinks you’re mad to want to keep the foundling.”

“What was Shiriye doing there?” Duniya said suspiciously.

“He was eager to have a private word with Qaasim,” said Taariq, giving away nothing. “Maybe he wanted to make more money on the side, selling watches or buying them at a discount from Qaasim, I don’t know.”

“What reasons did Shiriye give you when he thought I was mad to keep the baby?” Duniya asked.

“Shiriye doesn’t give reasons. He spouts opinions, crude prejudices and unlearned pontifications.”

“What’s your opinion, your refined, learned opinion?” Duniya asked.

He wore that distant smile of his, like a mirage, promising water to the thirsty, and giving the traveller hope of an oasis beyond the hill. The water of Taariq’s smile finally rose muddy and grey He said, “It’s such a difficult thing to advise people on these matters. It’s like getting married, a decision best left in the hands of the two persons involved, not third, fourth or fifth parties.”

“But what would you do if you were in my position?”

“I’d have to know a lot more than I do now before making up my mind.”

“But even if you did know, the beat of your mind and the path mine walks are so different that I doubt if we would arrive at the same conclusion.”

“I could not agree with you more,” he said.

Nagging at her mind, all this time, was the unfulfilled desire to get up and find out why the foundling had not stirred or cried for so long. But a voice whispered in her ear, assuring her that all was well with the baby, there was nothing to worry her.

“Tell me how you see it,” she said.

“I wouldn’t give him to Muraayo, for instance.”

“Why not?”

“Muraayo — and mind you I am very fond of her — has little in-depth understanding of symbols. What she does is to live on the surface of things, in the glitter of false beauties, easily contented with the superficiality of things. A baby like this foundling requires parents who will treat him as if he were of special standing, not reminded of his earthy beginnings, or God forbid, that his ancestry is unknown. Imagine if Jesus were jeered at by his peers, scornfully telling him that he did not have a father like them. The strength of the Jesus myth is that we are not told much. In the case of Moses, we first see him a floating foundling, in an ark, sucking his thumb. Then we meet him as an adult, God’s messenger. We don’t see mythical babies growing up, because it deprives them of that magical credibility that is the essence of all myths. So to remain faithful to the incredible task before him, this foundling has to grow up in an environment away from the likes of Muraayo and Qaasim, grow up in an incubated area of the world, unexposed to the day-to-day realities which surround most of us.”

“Suppose we believe that he has known parents?”

“It doesn’t mean much.”

“How is that?”

“Jesus had a known parent,” Taariq said, “his mother, so did Moses, or the African Sunjata or Mwindo — all these mythical children had known mothers. Maybe they were half-gods, half-human.”

“What if he dies young, say, even tomorrow, or ten years from now, or if something incurable kills him or if tetanus claims his life? Will all this talk about myths have been mere babble, mere words, no more?” she said.

“He’ll have assumed a different kind of motif in our story; everybody will get something different out of him.” He paused. “At worst, hell have served to make some of us think seriously.”

“What if Qaasim comes asking for him?”

It was amusing to see him hesitate, like a wary Huda afraid to stumble on the consonants of her discomfort. For this was closer to home, this was not a Judaic, Christian, Islamic or Mendink myth, this was more real, touching on fraternal realities and truths, on the relationship between elder and younger brother. And Taariq knew it, and he knew that Duniya knew it too. He was frank in his opinion.

“Qaasim doesn’t know the value of gifts. I’ve known him to give away some things even before taking possession of them himself.”

“Tell me why I should keep him.”

“Because you are most worthy of him.”

“In what way?”

He wore his far-away smile and Duniya knew what that meant. None the less, she listened to him respectfully. “I don’t wish to sound religious,” he said, “but I’m increasingly beginning to think that humankind must have faith in abstractions, and on this foundation we must reconstruct the world as we know it from the myth we have faith in, but not know, really know. There’s sustenance in myth, of an enriching kind.”

Duniya did not understand what he was talking about, but thought it unnecessary to ask him to explain. The light in his eyes dimmed, like the blue of a pilot-light of a gas-cooker going out because the gas-bottle it had been feeding on has run out. Had a sudden feeling of exhaustion descended on him? Could it be part of the withdrawal syndrome, unpleasant reactions to the absence of nicotine and alcohol at the same time? She changed the subject with considerable haste.

“I enjoyed reading your ‘Story of a Cow,’” she said.

He searched for words with the clumsiness of a man with very fat fingers trying to undo a subtle knot. He did not manage to speak a full sentence she could follow. His eyes narrowed to a slit.

Duniya was sure he was asleep, and she let him. She remembered the number of times he had come home, devastated. Or when she had returned from work to find him all over the floor and beds in the shapeless position drowsiness had called on him and her three children. She would take them to their respective places of sleep.

Now Duniya was certain she heard vague noises. Because she had her back to the door, she turned to see who it was that had come and decided to leave. Not meaning to, she kicked Taariq awake, and, startled, he cried something that sounded like “Who?”

The voice of an equally worried woman answered, “It is I.”

“Please come back,” said Duniya, recognizing the old woman’s voice.

In the meantime, Taariq sat up, eyes bloodshot, rubbing them sore and redder. She apologized for waking him; he, for napping.

And Duniya got up to welcome Maryam, Marilyn’s grandmother, with the words, “The children have all gone with Bosaaso and they have left me in charge today.” Then she introduced Taariq.

It was weird, but the old woman would not look at Taariq, who had risen to shake hands with her. Looking intently at Duniya, she said, “I am sorry to drop in on you like this, but I was actually looking for Marilyn, hoping I would find her here.”

“No, I am afraid she is not here.”

“Did she go out with your children?”

“I doubt it.”

She turned round and said to Duniya, “I must be on my way then.”

At which point, Taariq said to her back, “Have we not met, you and I?”

A smile dirtied the old woman’s clean features. “Have we?” she asked.

“You gave me a blanket one early morning, and kept vigil so that my drunken figure would not be pestered by stray dogs, hungry cats and midnight thieves, for which I’ve never thanked you.”

Marilyn’s grandmother shook her head, “I don’t recall any of that.”

“I have kept the blanket as a souvenir of your kindness.”

“It must be someone else you are confusing me with,” insisted the old woman.

“I meant to return the blanket, but didn’t for a number of complicated reasons, and therefore kept the episode as a private memory of an old woman’s kindness.”

“In that case,” the old woman said, “why devalue the significance of the act by mentioning it in public? Why must you speak of it?”

Taariq reflected on what the old woman said.

“She has a point,” Duniya agreed.

The old woman, her voice now confident and her eyes prepared to meet Taariq’s, said: “Is anything the matter with the baby? Why is he so quiet?”

No sooner had Duniya thought of what to say than the outside door opened, admitting the pot-bellied, perspiring figure of Qaasim. Like Shiriye, Qaasim had the eyes of a man who wanted to be somewhere else. He was very fat, like Shiriye, his body round like the lower part of a baobab tree, with stubby, short-nailed fingers. Qaasim’s eyes were small, his teeth tobacco-stained. His belly, it occurred to Duniya, had the shape of a cement-mixer. Qaasim, unlike Shiriye, spoke little. He let his money speak for him. Like an emperor with a full coffer to distribute, Qaasim gave and gave and gave. He left before people, praising or blessing him, got to the “Amen” of their prayers.

“Where is the little devil?” he said, in haste.

“What little devil?” asked Duniya.

“The little jinn that has created all this discord?”

The old woman looked as if she wished she had gone away earlier.

Duniya said, “When you come to someone’s home, you greet them first, you take a seat, you remain polite.”

“I said where is he?”

“Where are your manners?”

“Manners, listen to her talk of manners to me?” he addressed the old woman. “Where are your manners, Duniya? I’d like to know where your manners have gone, deciding to sever all relations with us, at a stroke. Don’t talk to me of manners.”

As the old woman prepared to leave, Qaasim said to her, “Do you know where the little devil is?”

“Of course, he is no devil — an angel maybe.”

“Where is he?”

“You know there are only two rooms here, since you own the place,” said the old woman angrily “Find him yourself.”

He gave heed to her advice and went to the Women’s Room. When eventually he re-emerged, he was not saying a word and was in no haste either. He took a seat, mournfully A blanket of sadness covered every inch of his large body, including his pot-belly, which appeared to have shrunk like a burst balloon.

Without being told so, Duniya knew the foundling had died.

As though he were a waterhole and all the others thirsty animals that had come to drink from it, everybody sat round Qaasim. Only Nasiiba and Duniya did not and they knew why Yarey, in her restless mood, sitting astraddle his knees, kept asking, “But why?” Yarey looked from Nasiiba, who had been the first to find him living, to Uncle Qaasim, who was the first to see him dead. Duniya, in a sad instant, did not put it past Qaasim to have strangled “the little devil who has created so much discord.”

The foundling’s death shook Duniya profoundly She could remember nothing that had ever touched her so deeply as his death. Nor could she be as philosophical about it as Taariq who had quoted the Somali proverb in which it is said that death saddens you less if it strikes a homestead far away from your own, or a camel herdsman whom you do not know. She asked herself what would become of Bosaaso and her myth-construct?

Bosaaso was the first to move away from those sitting round Qaasim’s waterhole. Agitated, his memory replayed a couple of sequences from two other deaths, his late wife and son. He stood still, rocking on his heels. He said, “Now we have to think of his burial and the bureaucratic rituals surrounding it.”

For a moment, Duniya hated him. How could a man so sensitive be so down-to-earth at the same time? She wondered if anyone had told him about the quit-order notice she had served on herself. And what was he likely to say when he had the opportunity to speak?

Taariq, on the other hand, had tear-stained cheeks and kept looking clumsily for a clean handkerchief, only discovering a crumpled tissue, dry with the holes of previous uses and mucuses, whenever he put his hand in his trouser pockets.

“I suppose we will have to submit the baby’s body to the mortuary for a post-mortem,” continued Bosaaso, “to find out why he died, and then submit six copies of the death certificate to the district police station where we registered him in the first placed.”

The old woman was the only person who went into the Women’s Room where the corpse was, keeping vigil, saying a few Koranic verses. She closed the window overlooking the road and covered the dead body with a sheet from Duniya’s cupboard.

Duniya wondered what would become of Bosaaso and her? Would something irrational like the foundling’s death demolish the symmetries they had constructed together?

At the foundling’s wake, anecdotes about death and creation myths were told. Present were a number of friends, including Mire, and all of Duniya’s immediate family. Mire told the first anecdote.

“A child dies in his sixth year and finds himself allotted to a lower berth than that occupied by a much older man who had died at sixty. The young boy says to God, ‘Why is it, Lord, that I have been offered a lower berth in heaven’s hierarchy than the grey old man here above me, when I haven’t lived long enough even to sin?’ And God responds: ‘Because this old man not only reached and lived beyond the age of reason, but he withstood all temptation without committing a single sin. That is why he has been rewarded well’ Unconvinced, the child then says, ‘I beg Your divine patience to tell me why I had to die young and wasn’t given the opportunity either to prove myself worthy of your rewards or that of sinning to deserve this punishment?’ God replies, ‘Because We knew you to be a sinner, and We spared you, for you would surely have earned Our disfavour if We had allowed you to live a moment longer. God is All-knowing, and Merciful.’ And so the child prostrates himself before the Almighty, Whose pardon he seeks, repeating the litany: God gives, He is All-knowing and Merciful.”

In the silence that followed this, Duniya got more drinks for those who wanted them. It was Bosaaso who had brought a crateful of ice-cold soda to the wake. For once, Duniya did not raise objections to receiving something from him. Now, she came back to where they all were, to hear Taariq tell a creation-myth.

“God, to while away His time, decided to create human beings, although not in his image, as the Bible says, but in the image of an Ethiopian. So He gives orders that clay be moulded in the shape of humans and fires be built to bake them. Then God stands to the side, watching His angel-assistants at work, and they bring to Him, with understandable excitement, a clay model as soon as one is ready to be shown to Him. The first one is overdone, too dark No good, says God. Allot this very dark creature to a forsaken place in the continent of Africa. The fire is lit afresh, another clay model is thrown in and then brought out, and God commands it to be assigned to Scandinavia. His comment being that it was too pale, no good either. The angels obliged. The same process is repeated again and again and again, until God finally gets what He wants: a model of handsomeness and of virtue, the right colour of skin, the right texture of hair, the right human intelligence and pride, everything. After viewing this special creature, God assigns him to Ethiopia. Gives to this creature the best of lands, the best weather, the best fruits the seasons offer. Makes him the envy of his neighbours, in short, the envy of all the races. And there came into being an Ethiopian.”

More stories were told. Duniya plied back and forth, providing drinks and snacks and Bosaaso helped her. She heard only parts of some of the other myths that Mataan and Qaasim retold, including a cynical Nigerian myth of creation in which God sits one whole day watching the Nigerians misbehave, and He just laughs. Then a Somali and a Chadian, both in tatters of threadbare famine, present themselves before God and ask why He had been so unkind to them while He had given all kinds of wealth to Nigeria. To which God replied, with tongue in cheek, “Take a good look at the people I gave to that country. You are better off where you are, I assure you.” And the Somali and the Chadian leave, gratified.

Duniya thought that at the centre of every myth is another: that of the people who created it. Everybody had turned the foundling into what they thought they wanted, or lacked. In that case, she said to herself, the Nameless One has not died. He is still living on, in Bosaaso and me.