Gifts

12

In which the foundling is buried and formalities with regard to the rites of burial are dealt with quietly. Later that day Duniya is invited out to a restaurant.

Duniya awoke with a start and she remained restless for some time, turning and tossing in her bed, in utter discomfort. She had dreamt of a dog, of indistinct breed, ugly and short-muzzled like a bulldog; and of a rowdy lot of teenaged boys and girls teasing him, the dog barking, his frightened tail timidly glued to trembling legs, and the teenagers having fun tormenting him.

At a handsome distance from the noisy youths, as though trying to separate herself from them, stood a woman bearing no resemblance to anyone Duniya had ever met, a woman who in some inexplicable manner appeared to share an atavistic bodily and spiritual closeness to the hound, in that she had a feral stare and sharper canine teeth than any Duniya had seen in the mouth of a human. At any rate, Duniya’s attention rested on the woman who, with an expectant air, kept looking to, her right. Was she waiting for someone coming from that direction? Duniya picked out the figure of a man lying on his back on the bare ground and out of whose middle a tree with a single leaf sprouted. The dog barked now at the bullying youths, now at the woman who seemed totally unaware of him, then again at the man who stayed impervious to all around him, and finally at the twiddly leaf, easing his nervous cries at the appearance on the scene of an eagle, quiet as its folded wings, an eagle which alighted on the tree: the tree forfeited its one and only leaf, its wholeness, its life.

Silence fell.

Meanwhile, the woman seemed to search her head for clues to the significance of what was taking place. The eagle focused his powerful eyes on the dog, now silent. The dog fixed on a snake whose arrival created a troubled stir in everyone, save the woman. But there were agitated movements all round. And there erupted a gust of wind enveloping everyone and everything in its mysterious activities, a whirlwind gathering dust, spiralling upwards; whereupon the woman’s eyes were touched for an instant by happiness. Also, doubt stole over her hard stare, softening it into the sweetest of smiles.

And the snake bit the woman.

And the skies were awash with the colours of seaweed.

Her gait eloquent as a sleepwalker’s, the woman strode away from the scene, the rowdy youths and the dog following, stopping only when they came upon the cot in which a baby’s corpse lay.

At this Duniya woke.

Burying the foundling was a quiet affair, attended only by family, friends and the priest invited to minister a simple religious ceremony Bosaaso’s cousin’s taxi provided transport for those without their own who wished to join the procession. Mire could not come, Taariq could not get away from work, whereas Qaasim arrived very late, just as they were leaving the cemetery When the corpse was interred and all formalities done with, Bosaaso and Duniya drove straight to the district police station to inform the authorities of the baby’s death. The inspector was deeply saddened by the news, saying, “Why, it was only yesterday the foundling was in the news, a living testimony to Duniya’s generous spirit.” The inspector doubted if the media would be interested in carrying the news of his demise.

From the district police station Duniya and Bosaaso went to the hospital, where they discovered she had been assigned light duty for the day. Her colleagues expressed their full sympathy, one and all, and she remarked to herself how touching it was that they spoke to her as though she had lost a baby of her own flesh and blood, not a foundling. All the while, tributaries of tears worked their way up from her chest, her nose snorting, eyes blinking, their lids closing and opening of their own accord: this ended in her larynx bursting into an explosive sobbing, her mouth slobbering with the spermy saliva of slovenly secretions. But her eyes remained absolutely dry.

Even so, some inner worry drummed in the ears of her heartbeat. And she yawned ominously, feeling she had been emptied of her natural strength, and that a change had taken place inside her. A mantle of mystery hung over why the foundling’s death should affect her in ways she hadn’t imagined possible. She felt dissipated. Worse, she felt emptied of possibilities of what to do with herself, her time, what to say about him who had come and gone, what to think, how to think clearly. Sadness showed itself in her look now and again. Her posture ungainly, her legs a little shaky, the soles of her feet riddled with thorn-stings sharp as needles, Duniya sat down, sensing the state of her weightlessness. Indeed, the fear that she might fly off was so over-powering that she held on to the back of the chair, incapable of gauging its effects on her bodily behaviour. Only when she thought about Bosaaso did it seem worth her while to stay put.

Again she was won over by the memory that their house appeared emptied of life too, the radio silenced and every single door securely locked. Duniya was glad to be moving, in anticipation of happier days. Her children, in the meantime, had gone their different ways, Yarey opting to spend the day with Marilyn, Mataan with Waris, and Nasiiba — who knows what surprises she might spring on her mother when she finally re-emerged. An empty house is a sad thing, Bosaaso had said, but a vacuous life is a sadder one.

He gained courage and began taking more and bolder decisions, speaking of filling their evenings and empty late afternoons with activities. We would do this, he would say, we would do that. We would learn to swim. We would go out to restaurants. We would leam how to drive vehicles, in the hope of becoming independent, no longer in need of being given lifts, or even pestered by terrible men. We, it turned out, was a composite person (Duniya + Bosaaso = we!), able to perform miracles, capable of filling days and nights with delightful undertakings worth an angel’s time.

When the baby had been alive neither Duniya nor Bosaaso had thought of inventing things to occupy them: he had made life take shape around them. And people came, visitors arrived in hordes, to play cards, to consume tea, to tell each other stories and to become friends. Duniya couldn’t help taking account of the fact that the foundling’s death imposed a compulsory set of grammatical alterations on their way of speaking, producing a we that had not been there before, a we of hybrid necessities, half real, half invented.

The light duty which Dr Mire had assigned to her today consisted principally of receiving the in-patients’ X-ray plates and registering their names against the spaces allotted, only that. She would stare for an endless number of minutes at the negatives of the X-rays, fascinated, dreamy-looking, her fingers absently tracing the multi-wrinkled reproductions, thinking (how weird!) of a dead foetus preserved in a jar filled with clear vinegar — my God, how very shocking, she said to herself sadly Part of her imagined the blank emptiness of the cryptographic plates to represent the baby’s death and the filled spots to stand for those occupied by Bosaaso.

And then Bosaaso came to fetch her. It was early afternoon.

On meeting him she said that she felt hungry all day and yet had not really wanted to eat, for she had no appetite. Or maybe she wasn’t expressing herself well? Bosaaso surmised that eating was an undertaking for its own sake. He cited as an example the weeks following Yussur’s and his son’s tragic deaths when he gave up smoking. He also remembered how empty he had felt as soon as he finished defending his PhD thesis. He had been so restless he could only fill the vacuity he sensed in his soul with work, more work. It was then that the idea came to him.

“We’re going out to dinner tonight,” he said.

Smiling condescendingly, she said, “Who are we, may I ask?”

“You and I, of course.”

A long instant passed before she realised that his presence had a pleasant effect, and she was not feeling all that vacuous; rather she felt as if she were filled with aspects of him. “And where are we going?” she asked.

“I know a good restaurant.”

“See you shortly,” she said.

He offered to come for her at about seven.

Duniya’s feeling of weightlessness returned directly she was alone, so that she had to lean against the outside door once she opened it. She remained where she was until her chest rose, with her breathing, her heart beating faster in anticipation of self-hatred, a notion which nauseated her. Or was it love? Whichever it was, she wished to have nothing to do with it. Surely to be affected by such a nebulous sensation of sickness is no love, or is it? Her self-questioning inspired courage in her and she was able to walk through the entrance, her gait uncertain, her whole body numbed by worry.

She unlocked the door to the room she shared with Nasiiba and brought out a chair; perhaps if she stayed still, the fog in her mind would clear. But she couldn’t remain at peace with herself; it was as though her brain carried with it seeds which suddenly broke, bringing forth a baobab tree in full bloom. She thought that the previous week’s events had planted seedlings sown to germinate, something that would happen sooner or later, but the foundling who had been the seedsman was no longer there.

Duniya’s thoughts were chaotic and in a state of upheaval until the door opened, letting in someone with steps soft as weak applause. The tense look in her eyes as she welcomed Nasiiba with a smile belied her true feelings. Contradictory emotions were disguised by the defiant grin that defined Duniya’s features as she and her daughter touched, as they kissed. As usual the young woman was full of life, bursting with the desire to make something happen. She was visibly sad that the foundling had died, but that didn’t deter her from investing her energies either in herself or her mother. “What’s happening, Mummy?” she asked.

Duniya felt very restless today and she got up, her cheeks feeling warm. She couldn’t decide what to tell Nasiiba and what not to; a great deal was happening, and not all of it was good or bad, or even easy to explain. Love was happening, for instance. Nausea was taking place, for example. She gave as reassuring a smile as she was capable of and then said “We’re going to dinner, Bosaaso and I.”

Nasiiba said, “We’re going out to a restaurant, are we?”

Duniya decided that Nasiiba’s use of the first person plural was essentially different from her own, realizing, as though for the first time, that the pronoun had such a wealthy set of associations. It was like learning a new language. Presently, Duniya was attended by the pleasant remembrance that at the mention of Bosaaso’s name all her vertiginous sensations were gone. She felt anchored, her soul cast in its intention to pursue its destiny, its happiness.

“We must dress up, mustn’t we then?” said Nasiiba.

Duniya stood in the sadness of a shock she hadn’t anticipated. The truth was she hadn’t thought of dressing up for the occasion, she hadn’t the calmness of mind to prepare herself for the changes that were taking place around her, as well as inside her. She now gripped the chair nearest her, glancing at Nasiiba’s direction, and recognizing the need to put herself in her daughter’s hands; in essence, admit that she was in love.

Her tone of voice not unlike a very young girl trying on her mother’s high-heel shoes, Duniya said, “How about if I shower first? Don’t you think that’s a good idea? In the meantime you may choose the dress you want me to try on.”

“What a wonderful idea,” said Nasiiba rather excitedly.

Sunlight glared wickedly on her eyes, and she grinned. Things were much more complicated than she imagined, and no giving was innocent. What was it Nasiiba had said? That she would help dress her? Duniya was distressed at the thought of her daughter asking her to undress, to stand naked in front of her, to pirouette before deciding how she should dress. She now stood in a posture of intense self-questioning, wondering what to do. She was wrapped in the folds of a robe, fully clothed, save for her head whose curls shone from being hastily shampooed but fully rinsed.

Nasiiba said, “I’ve shut the outside door and we’re as private as we are likely to be. What I want you to do is to step out of your puritanical robe so I can take a good look at what you’ve got by way of a body. We haven’t much time, so please hurry.”

Staggered, Duniya said, “You can’t be serious?”

“I am,” Nasiiba assured her.

“I am your mother,” Duniya reminded her.

Nasiiba looked in the general direction of the door to the room they shared. “I’m your daughter, need I remind you, and in any case, I’ve seen you naked or part-naked many times. So what’s the fuss? Let’s get on with it.”

Duniya’s memory was haunted by the thought that Nasiiba had seen her totally naked and making love to Taariq, as she had learned a couple of nights before. Her voice laced with pauses of self-doubt, she inquired, “What’s that on the back of the chair?”

“The dress I want you to try on.”

If she knew how, Duniya would have brought the whole charade to an end. Did Nasiiba think that because she had presented her with a dress or because Duniya had accepted to be dressed up, the young woman could request that her mother undress?

“You’re no shrine,” said Duniya, “and I’m not making an offering of my body.” So saying, she turned her back on Nasiiba but she failed to take one single step away, as though incapable of understanding the significance of her decision. She was weighed down by a sadness of heart because all loving thoughts were for the instant absent from her. She was close to making an appeal to let her be when Nasiiba suggested anew that she undress.

Somehow Duniya came to realise there was no turning back and what had to be done had to be done, reminding herself that the twin’s father, being blind, had never set eyes on her body, and that it was ironic now that his daughter was undressing her. She also drew strength from the memory that she, as a midwife, had seen many a woman naked, women whose bodies she had handled, whose most private parts she touched with panache. Her gaze worried, her body trembling, she flung aside the robe with which she had been covered, saying, “There you are,” speaking the words with flamboyance.

Nasiiba’s judgement came quickly: “Not bad at all.”

Duniya, for her part, was too tongue-tied to say anything. The one good thing this humiliation was achieving for her was that she was becoming heavy like a club-foot, no fear of flying away from weightlessness. This caused a kind of acrimony to grow within her, but she was certain the feeling would vanish and she and Bosaaso would once again be united — and in love.

Meanwhile, Nasiiba was formidably excited, her speeches a mixture of half-understood and fully-comprehended ideas, throwing freely into the air a wonderous set of words meaning nothing to her. There was a sub-pattern in her language, something earnest and humourless too, like a mother readying her daughter for a children’s party given in the house of an in-law with whom the woman is uncomfortable. It was an effort for Duniya to stand naked and still.

Nasiiba was saying, “You will wear your hair up, in a crown of a bun. But first well comb it, and before doing so, well apply some sort of brilliantine-conditioner. A very upright bun will suit you fine. And no head-dress.”

“May I put on something in the meantime?”

“In a moment, no need to panic.”

Duniya reached for a headscarf, with which she covered her embarrassment in the attitude of an Eve hiding herself with Freudian fig-leaves. Her face was undeniably that of a humiliated person, but she remained silent, although not still.

“Here is an underbodice, a pair of underpants and a brassiere,” Nasiiba said to her mother. “Now put these on and no fuss pleased.” The young woman might have been a mother giving two stop-gap mouthfuls to a child crying for food.

“I should never have asked you to help me dress,” regretted Duniya.

To this Nasiiba retorted, “Parents seldom remember the million embarrassing moments their children live through, being dressed in clothes they would rather not wear, being fed on food they would rather not eat, being washed when they would be all too delighted to remain dirty, their private parts being fingered, mutilated, massaged. Not only have you done these and worse to me, but do you realize, Mother dear, that as a Somali mother and a Muslim one at that, you have the legal, parental right to check if I am virgin.”

Having put on the underpants, the brassiere and the underbodice Duniya asked, “What would you like me to do now?”

Nasiiba grabbed a straight-backed chair and placed it in such a way Duniya would face east, where the light was better. Then she walked back and took a good hold of her mother’s hand, and her mother followed her, timid like a bride entering her new home. “Sit and stay still and don’t say a word,” Nasiiba commanded.

Duniya did not like it when someone else held sway over her, she hated the feeling of powerlessness, of not knowing what was being done to her. “The reason why I rebel against the authority of men,” she once said to a friend, “is that they tend to make decisions affecting women’s lives at meetings at which women are not present.” Was Duniya now seeing Nasiiba as “male”? Had she not stripped her, as men had, had she not rendered her powerless as men had? “What are you doing to me, Nasiiba?” she asked.

“Have faith in me,” was all Nasiiba was willing to say.

She began twisting and turning plaits of hair on Duniya’s crown. Both were relaxed enough; Nasiiba was the more pleased with the outcome of her artistic effort, though Duniya was less tense, her body less rigid. As if this displeased her, she went out of her way to say, “Incidentally, Nasiiba, did I see wads of money tacked and hidden away in an Iranian Islamic women’s magazine called Mahjouba?”

Duniya might have been a pet cat, well-fed and pampered, which had brought into one’s living-room the corpse of a dead lizard when one had guests. “I won’t stand for this nonsense,” Nasiiba raged, having in anger thrown the comb which, in somersaults of fury hit the furthest wall in the courtyard. “What were you doing rummaging in my drawers, through my private things?” All combing, plaiting and bun-shaping came to a sudden stop. Nasiiba was livid.

“I believed I had misplaced something.”

“I hate you sometimes,” said Nasiiba.

“No, you don’t,” Duniya said.

Like someone appreciating an artwork, Nasiiba took a couple of steps backwards. She placed her hands on her hips in a defiant gesture and said, her voice mimicking her mother’s, “By any chance, did I see Fariida at the clinic today? Or: in aid of what did you donate blood, Nasiiba? And now what?” And then, in her normal voice, “What were you doing rummaging in my things?”

“At times I wonder if it’s your place or mine to lose tempers? Now come,” Duniya said, “don’t let’s waste more time, for the truth is I suspect I know where the money came from. Come and finish what you’ve started, and be quick.” Duniya was very firm.

Before long, and without so much as a word, Nasiiba resumed building a castle of a bun. And neither talked until Nasiiba said she was done. And when she saw discomfort on her mother’s face, the young woman brought out a mirror for Duniya to take a look.

Duniya said, “I’ve never worn my hair uncovered, since my seventeenth year, Nasiiba.”

“You’re modern-looking when it is uncovered,” suggested her daughter.

“And it sticks out like the red of a semaphore in an otherwise darkened street and the whole world can see it from a mile away.”

“You will get used to it, and Bosaaso will love you all the more for it,” ventured Nasiiba.

At the mention of Bosaaso’s name Duniya relaxed.

Meanwhile, Nasiiba’s tone of voice had lost its distinctiveness. She was saying, “Your face needs a touch of make-up, a thin coat, that is all.” And she was coming menacingly in Duniya’s direction, carrying a variety of brushes and bottles.

“No make-up for me, thank you.”

A moment later Nasiiba was back, carrying a pair of ear-rings. “Whose are these?” wondered Duniya suspiciously.

“They are yours actually, given to you by Uncle Abshir.”

Duniya nodded her head, acknowledging the truth of the statement.

“If you believe that your ears stick out like the flagposts of a football stadium, perhaps this pair of ear-rings will correct that.” They were very pretty, a circular shape with a five-cornered star fitted into the frame, and painted blue.

By the time they heard Bosaaso’s car-horn announcing his arrival, Duniya had the chance to give her head a few touches here and there, and was feeling comfortable in the dress she had chosen and which Nasiiba had approved. It was just as she was joining Bosaaso who remained in the car that Duniya said to Nasiiba, “Please give my condolences to Fariida, who I understand is the foundling’s mother, and tell her to come and visit us whenever she feels like it.” And Duniya left the house in haste, eager not to be interrogated by her daughter.

And we went to a restaurant.

The moment the waiter who came to take their order left them alone in the half-dark, they kissed, with only a paraffin-lamp providing a semblance of light. The desire to kiss had caught them unprepared, with the suddenness of a hay-fever sneeze: it was brain-clearing. They embraced a long time, their breath merging, and each had what it took to make the other comfortable and vulnerable.

Silent, not kissing, they now sat on a straw-mat on the ground, under a thorny tent of acacia bushes, a paraffin-lamp hanging down from a branch in the tree, its light not interfering with their privacy. Any Mogadiscian wanting undisturbed quiet, or in search of the city’s best lamb and rice, indeed any resident of Mogadiscio desiring to taste the romanticized image of untamed jungles: such people came here, men and women in love, foreigners in need of local colour or visitors seeking meal-souvenirs to remind them of Somalia. Needless to say, these entrepreneurial kitchens attracted Mogadiscio’s local motorists and for a very good reason.

The waiters carried lanterns, adhering strictly to codes of behaviour guaranteeing absolute privacy to the clients patronizing the establishment. They moved quietly, they cleared their throats or coughed as they approached a tree-tent in which a couple nestled intimately against one another or in each other’s embrace.

Duniya got to her feet, which were wobbly, once she caught her breath, after what amounted to the longest kiss, the most passionate one to date. Maybe, giddiness made her lose the sense of where she was, with whom or why Her head spun, her legs were not stable enough to support the weight of her swaying body and yet she was on cloud eleven, remembering no joy comparable to this. Had the long, passionate kissing dazed her so that she had taken hold of Bosaaso’s car keys as she scrambled to her feet, something of which she had been unaware? He was now saying to her, “And where are we driving off to, may I ask?”

“But I don’t even know how to drive!” she replied.

“In that case, I will teach you how to,” he said.

And she sobered up instantly.

She sat down away from him, recalling her conversation with Nasiiba who had offered to teach her to swim. Was she, Duniya, being prepared for a higher state of completeness, as it were, being taught to swim and to drive too? She pushed the car keys towards him.

As though in response to her unfriendly gesture, the heavens thundered threateningly, and a mad wind blew. Bosaaso rose to transfer the paraffin lamp from the place higher up in the tree to a spot much lower, out of the current of air. While looking up at him Duniya saw comets flying earthwards, falling, as the Somalis say, on jinns and non-Muslims. She gave a start when a bolt of lightning struck the skies, making her think of the three-thonged whip farmers crack to chase away birds feeding on their crops.

As he sat down beside her, he said, “What fireworks!”

“These are merely falling stars dropping on jinns: isn’t that what Muslims say?” she asked, taking hold of his outstretched hand and fondling it. She didn’t know what she was saying or why.

“The Koran informs us that these fiery comets are hurdled at nosey jinns eaves-dropping at the gates of heaven,” Bosaaso commented.

“Very naughty of them!” said Duniya.

When the heavens stopped thundering and the shooting-stars dropped no more, Duniya told herself that maybe the jinns, having become less inquisitive, had come down to earth and were whispering sweet nothings in her ears, which she touched on impulse.

“Is one of your ear-rings missing, or did you come out wearing only one?” he asked. “You couldn’t have lost it in the car?”

“My ear-rings?” And she felt her ear-lobes, one at a time. “I arrived wearing a pair of them,” she informed him, but made no move.

“I am certain I didn’t.”

He was immediately on his knees, searching for the missing earring by feel, in the half-dark, because he was sure she wouldn’t want him to bring down the paraffin lamp. The uneven roughness of the straw-mat pricked his palms. Nevertheless he remained undeterred even when she displayed little interest in recovering the missing item. “When do you think you lost it?” he asked.

She decided to frame the moment of their passion in her private memory, choosing not to speak of it lest she should devalue it. And yet she was definite the ear-ring had dropped then, a few moments prior to the instant when the heavens let go a fireworks of falling stars. “I can’t recall when,” she said.

He went nearer her. “I remember the shape of the ear-ring’s star, painted light blue, enclosed in an all-encompassing circle of silver.” He was so close to her she could hear his breathing, and could feel the warmth of his body. He took hold of her hand; she let him. “They were beautiful on you.”

She said nothing, because his head was moving upwards, towards her mouth, and their lips were preparing to encounter in a kiss of insane passion. She sensed a tremor running through her: what flames, she thought to herself. Supporting his weight, which was lighter than she had imagined, he returned again and again and again, asking for more and more. Finally she gave him a gentle push, saying, “Please do not rush me.”

He breathed loudly and explosively as if he had been under water for a long time and had just come back to the surface. He sat up, his face spreading with an understanding grin. She would have thought him coarse if he had spoken a single word of explanation or of apology. And both were glad when neither said anything.

She studied the shadow his head cast, a head tilting to the side. He sucked his lips in silence. Looking at the night outside, beyond the paraffin lamp’s moving shades, Duniya could see the silhouettes of lantern-carrying figures swinging in and out of her sight, like falling stars taking an eternity to reach the earth before exploding.

Silent, they watched an approaching, gyrating light. The footsteps of the waiter were followed by the noise of an idling diesel engine, probably the vehicle of a client being escorted to a tree-tent. Then they heard low voices, that of a man and a woman placing their orders. Then quiet.

Bosaaso said, “If it were my mother who had lost an ear-ring, she might have hummed a tune and danced a sad song about such a wasteful loss. If it were my Afro-American friend who had misplaced it, then the song and dance would have assumed a rhetorical dimension. And if it had been Yussur, she would have given a moan of regret, and would somehow have brought her mother into the talk, to blame her for it. But you? You say nothing, and show no worry in the world.”

A lantern came into view, and its carrier shouted a number from a decent distance. Since it wasn’t theirs, they ignored the waiter’s cry. When everything was quiet, she asked “What’s your Afro-American friend’s name?”

“Zawadi is her African name, Sarah her American given name.”

“Is Zawadi a Hausa name?”

“Swahili.”

“And how long did the two of you live together?”

He pondered for a long moment.

“You don’t have to answer if you do not want to.”

He shook his head vigorously. “It’s not that I don’t want to answer your question, it is that our living together had two phases, the first being simply flat-sharing, in that I was her tenant, then half a year or so later we began sharing more and more of the responsibilities of house-keeping and emotional aspects of our lives, including her two children.”

“What age were they?”

“They were much smaller then, of course, the girl eight, the boy six. This was thirteen years ago, when I first started working with a UN agency, based in New York, a year after taking my PhD.”

“And what work did she do?”

“She’s a community worker,” he said, pausing only to continue a second later. “You see, I don’t mind living by myself, but eating alone is something I cannot bear. As it happened I would cook larger portions and would invite the children to share the food with me, given that their mother would seldom come home to feed them. The children would play with the neighbourhood kids, and all I did was ask them to take a break, come and eat, and they would do so.”

Duniya was reminded of her own situation with Taariq, just before they married, with Taariq looking after her twins and her hospital assignments frequently keeping her out of the house. She was about to ask him if he had considered marrying her, when she saw a lantern approaching quietly. A waiter shouted their number, to which they responded simultaneously The tall waiter entered their acacia-tent with his head bent, smiling. He placed the food before Duniya, and pushed the bill, “which must be paid before consumption of item”, as he put it, in front of Bosaaso. Duniya insisted that they each settle half the bill, but Bosaaso wouldn’t hear of it, saying he was taking her out this evening, and requesting her not to spoil a pleasant night out by debating about petty sums such as these — after all, he had always accepted her generosities.

The bill settled, the waiter left, Duniya wondered if Bosaaso had been generous with the tip.

Silent, they took turns rinsing their fingers in the warm water the waiter had brought for that purpose. In the half-dark, she thought that Bosaaso was smiling like someone about to make a mischievous remark. She has the calm confidence to wait, and he the good breeding not to interrupt her eating.

“If Zawadi had said yes, I would have married her,” he said.

Duniya took a deep breath, but said nothing.

They ate in silence, Duniya affecting disinterest in the reasons why Zawadi wouldn’t marry him. She took care not to munch noisily, lest this interfered with their quiet thinking. Once or twice, their fingers collided, and each apologized to the other. When this happened a few more times Duniya chuckled. Bosaaso went on, “Basically, Zawadi mistrusted men as husbands, not as lovers, or even platonic friends. She loathed being taken for granted, which, she said, was how black men behaved, no matter where in the world they lived, the USA, Africa, the West Indies, men who considered women their rightful property. Some of the black men she knew came into a woman’s place with their flies bulging with unfulfilled lust. It was as though they were entering a urinal, she would say, their trouser fronts undone, at the ready, prepared for action.”

He gave himself time to eat a morsel in silence.

“Will you tell me how someone like Kaahin has entered your life?” she asked. “It seems to me that he doesn’t belong in your years of childhood spent in the town G. Or does he?”

“Zawadi brought him into my life.”

“How’s that?”

“In one of her community work projects, Zawadi stumbled upon Kaahin, living in a commune off Harlem, with no papers authorizing him to be in the US, and not doing what he had gone to do, take a degree. She took him into her able social worker’s hands and within a year he was straightened out, capable of going back to Harvard.”

Duniya said with feeling, “What an amazing woman, this Zawadi.”

“She is a gift. You should meet her.”

They fell silent, both thinking that Zawadi and Duniya would get along splendidly.

Then Duniya said, “What I don’t understand, after all this, is why Zawadi is not here, living with you or paying you occasional visits. Surely there’s the Afro-American myth and wish on the part of many of them to return to their mother-continent. Or did you discourage her from joining you?”

“On the contrary. When Mire came to pay us a visit in New York and he and I began toying with the idea of returning home and volunteering our services, Zawadi made encouraging remarks about the project we were embarking on, that’s all. Of course she was only too ecstatic for us, but she wouldn’t come. It was she who contacted Kaahin, convincing him that his lot lay with ours.”

“All this remains a mystery to me,” she confessed.

“Zawadi quoted a variation of an English proverb, giving it a slight twist: ‘It is at home that charity is bred like a stallion of Arabian nobility.’ She urged that there was no point to her coming to Africa to do volunteer work when her home-grown people, the Blacks in the USA, needed her just as desperately ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘Africa is not ready for my Black American way of life, and I am too old to unlearn all I’ve learned.’ But she promised that one day she would pay Africa a deserved visit.”

Neither spoke for a good while, and they ate quietly and selfconsciously When both had eaten enough, each helped the other to wash and rinse their hands by holding the soap, giving the towel and pouring out the water.

Anxious, their conversation travelled no further than immediate, mundane questions responded to with short answers. Somehow Abshir’s name came into their talk, and Bosaaso remembered that a friend of his was leaving for Rome on the Somali Airlines flight in a couple of days. Would she want him to carry Abshir’s letter?

“Let’s find out if Miski is on that flight,” suggested Duniya, “because she has always been our courier and she and Abshir have an established way of reaching each other.”

BRUSSELS (AFP/REUTER)

After economic and political pressures (and no doubt some delicate negotiations), the European Community has finally imposed its mighty will on the Ethiopian President Mengistu Haile Mariam by making him accept that a team of EC officials oversee the distribution of food aid in the country’s northern provinces of Tigray and Eritrea. The Ethiopian government has communicated its acceptance of these conditions to the EC Development Commissioner based in Addis Ababa. The European Community has been preoccupied over the possibility that food aid might not reach the two northern rebel-held provinces. Preparations are presently under way for the team to fly to Addis Ababa.

To date, the Community has granted food aid worth 260 million dollars. In addition, it has also given some long-term development aid amounting to about 100 million dollars for the Marxist-led government of Ethiopia to carry out reforms in its land and agricultural policies.

13

In which Duniya is given her first driving lesson.

A woman lay asleep in the scanty shade of a fig tree, dreaming. She heard a weak whistle, that of a kestrel, then the shrill cry of a kite calling her name, a call she refused to respond to. When the woman imagined that the hawk had tired of shouting her name, she opened her eyes and to her amazement saw a hat drop from the clutch of the kestrel’s claws, a hat which she caught with her alert hands. When next the hawk spoke her name, the woman prepared to get up, but couldn’t bring herself to do so, given that she was absolutely naked. Again the kestrel’s claws let go another surprise gift, this time a garland of leaves, thus providing her with something to cover her embarrassment with. That done, the woman rose to her feet, putting on the hat, too.

But the woman was on a footpath going south towards a marshland. With the sleepy look of a dreamer, she spotted the figure of a man in an upright position, a man dwelling within the confines of a pearl-shaped framework of wires serving as a cage. Further ahead, there was a three-storey house with a large fruit garden surrounding it. Rather suddenly, the hawk chanted its message, “Befriend me, Woman, and I will be yours for ever; have faith in me and I will give you what is due to you.”

Frightened, the woman let go both the hat and garland of leaves, upon which she now trod. The hawk’s cries ceased, night became day: and the woman woke up.

Duniya and Bosaaso met later that day in front of the hospital. It was a little after two in the afternoon. One could see how much they had looked forward to their reunion, having been separated by sleep as well as work. They had had a serious talk about what Duniya referred to as her family’s total dependence on Bosaaso’s lift-offering generosity something that would have had to come to a stop sooner or later. They had arrived at an alternative arrangement mutually acceptable to both: from tomorrow morning, Bosaaso’s cousin’s taxi would take Nasiiba and Yarey to and from their respective schools, in return for a token sum to be paid by Duniya monthly She was content, the children were, and so was Bosaaso.

They were in his car now and he was driving her home. “And how has your day been?” he asked.

“It’s been difficult,” she said, leaning forward and buckling up, a must for any passenger in Bosaaso’s vehicle. She was incapable of putting on her safety-belt, but nevertheless kept up the attempt.

He helped her with it, and both were conscious of their hands touching. “Mine has been nothing but meeting after meeting after boring meeting without us achieving anything,” he said.

“The classical definition of bureaucracy.”

“I hate it.”

Her voice was unexpectedly curt, saying, “Please let’s leave quickly.”

He changed gear without questioning her or turning to discover whom they were avoiding. The screeching tyres raised dust and the eyebrows of a number of bystanders waiting for taxis and buses. Neither spoke until they were on the principal road leading to her house; and it was Duniya who found it necessary to do so. “There is a strange mixture of possessiveness and a sense of guilt in my determination to be alone with you, and I don’t like it; although I do not mind that you also give a lift to my colleagues, I really do not want anyone else to be around. I wonder if I am becoming mean, or jealous?”

His choked throat wouldn’t clear of the joy with which it was clogged.

“How would you explain my behaviour?” she asked.

He was thinking exalted thoughts, the expression on his face became a smile. “Maybe it’s because of the early phase of our relationship — maybe that accounts for what one might call your ‘possessive behaviour.’ Is this partly why we’ve arranged for my cousin’s taxi to pick up Nasiiba and Yarey from their respective schools, since we intend to be alone with each other?”

There was no point challenging his interpretation of the reasons why she had agreed to pay for her daughters’ taxi fare monthly; not to be alone with him, although this gave her pleasure, but to depend less and less on his generosity But never mind, she thought. “But how do you explain why we wish to spend more time together, by ourselves?” she said.

“I suppose there isn’t enough in the way of you and of me to go round, which is why we tend to appear possessive, appear to be unwilling to share,” he said. “You. Me. Us. That’s what it comes down to, ultimately.”

Duniya took note of the flourish of pronouns, some inclusive, some exclusive; pronouns dividing the world into separable segments, which they labelled as such. Apparently, the two of them were we, the rest of the world they. Together, when alone with each other, they in turn fragmented themselves into their respective I’s. That is to say, they were like two images reflecting a oneness of souls, more like twin ideas united in their pursuit to be separable and linked at the same time. Is this the definition of love?

Aloud, she said, “I cannot help feeling guilty turning my back on my colleagues whose eyes I avoid because my wish to be alone with you is overwhelming. I grant you the feeling awes me with a sense of shame and guilt.”

He slowed down. Traffic moved at a turtle’s pace, crawling and honking. A lorry had levelled the trees separating the dual carriageway in an ugly accident, with half of the vehicle’s huge body on its side and the cabin facing in the opposite direction to that in which it had been travelling. They talked about the incorrigible foolishness of some of the drivers not only risking their own lives but those of others. By the time they reached Duniya’s home, Bosaaso was able to tell her that he had arranged for her to be given her first driving lesson.

“And who is to give me my first lesson?” she asked.

“We’ll talk about it after lunch,” he said.

They were welcomed at the outside door by Yarey who was eager to see them. Nasiiba, for her part, had prepared a special meal for them. “But why’s the table set for only two?” inquired Duniya.

“We’ve eaten,” announced Mataan, “the kind of a feast one starves oneself for.”

“Enjoy yourselves,” said Yarey.

“Bon appetit,” said Nasiiba.

Wearing her hair uncovered brought along with it a change of dress style, in a sense a change of personality. Bosaaso liked it a great deal, her children approved of it too, but were they the only ones who mattered? Obviously not. For some of her colleagues at work had commented on it adversely She herself had often described a woman’s bare head as being narcissistic, and requiring the use of mirrors and similar modern gadgets. After lunch, for instance, Duniya gave herself a few moments alone in the bathroom, absorbed in an act of self-regard, her attention totally engrossed in the three white hairs that wouldn’t curl no matter what she did, three flimsy white thread-like filaments with a slender body, unhealthy and pale. She knew she shouldn’t pull them out, otherwise they would multiply, a fact she had learnt from Taariq, her second husband whose once very dark beard was now laced with a great many grey hairs. She might never have taken notice of these emaciated hairs if she had been wearing her hair hidden in the prudence of an Islamic tradition which instructs women to cover their hair with scarves of modesty.

“Where are the children?” she asked.

“Maybe they think we would appreciate some privacy,” he said, getting up in an attempt to welcome her.

“Everybody is going insane,” she said, bending down to pick up a pair of plimsolls which Nasiiba had brought out for her to try on. She sat down to do just that, in silence. The shoes did not pinch, but neither were they comfortable. Duniya took a couple of steps backward, then forward, self-conscious like someone at a shoe-shop acquiring a pair. Then her eyes fell on a pair of slacks slung over an untaken chair, testimony to how much Nasiiba would commit her mother to, Nasiiba who knew no limits, and who. would want her mother to change her style of clothing, and with it her modest personality. No slacks, Duniya told herself, dreading the thought of putting on a pair and discovering a front bulge where there had been none before, not to mention the prominent, fleshy hips; these imperfections worried her aesthetic sense of being.

“I’ve made some tea,” he said at last.

She was delighted at hearing this, delighted, above all, because he had felt comfortable enough to make them tea at her place. “Where would you like us to have our tea?” she asked, satisfied with the canvas shoes.

“Out in the shade,” he said, and he shifted the chairs, one at a time.

As she accepted the tea he served her, she acknowledged to herself how he wished to assure her of his good intentions by inviting her first to Mire’s, then out to a restaurant, before asking her to go with him to his place. So far, everything was going smoothly Only she thought, her reluctance to accept his gifts was making him tense, and this might, in the end, cause a strain on their relationship. But he did not insist that she receive everything he offered. And there were no indications of anxiety in him. In any case, she reasoned to herself, she did accept gifts from him in the form of lifts, in exchange for meals which he ate at her place. Fair was fair, and he was the kind of man who was fair.

“Did you say that you didn’t know where the children went?” she asked.

He shook his head, no.

“I feel they are up to no good, and sense you aren’t telling me something I ought to know,” she said teasingly “So where did they go? Or have you taken them somewhere yourself?”

Again he shook his head, no. Again.

Duniya abandoned the idea of pressing him to tell her secrets he didn’t want to part with, certain that sooner or later one of her children would let her know what they had done, or where they had been to, and with whom. She had a sip of her tea, reminding herself that the two of them had come a long way since they had first met each other in a taxi, he disguised as a cabby. Since then, they had become very close, and her children were fond of him. Although she had promised herself not to insist that he tell her where her children had gone, Duniya wondered what he would do if she had. Would he give in to make her content?

“About your driving lesson this afternoon?” he asked.

Oddly enough, this brought to her mind their passionate, long kiss the night before, when she had risen to her feet, unconscious of what she was up to, or of the fact that she had his car keys in her hand. “What about my driving lesson?” she asked.

“I’ve taken the liberty of asking a friend of mine to give you the lessons,” he said.

“And where is he, this friend of yours?” She was sure it wasn’t Mire he had in mind, but then she didn’t know his friends; he often came to her home alone and never bothered to talk about others. “Who is this friend of yours?”

“His name is Kaahin,” said Bosaaso.

He could tell that the Idea of Kaahin giving her driving lessons didn’t suit hen “I don’t know the man,” she said, which was true.

“But you don’t like him?”

“What makes you say that?”

“That much is clear.”

She kept walking in the direction of the door, as if expecting Kaahin might come through it any instant. “Where is he, anyway?”

“He’s late, as usual.”

“The closest he and I got to each other was when he reversed into Mataan, nearly killing him, poor thing, and I would have murdered him if he had hurt my son, I swear I would have,” she said.

“The trouble with him,” Bosaaso said, “is that he loves women.”

The anomalous word “love” that Bosaaso had used in a wrong context shocked her, to say the least. She sat up. “He what?”

“People say that Kaahin loves women,” said Bosaaso, backtracking.

“To my mind, Kaahin does not love women,” she said, “in fact, he hates them, or rather he despises them.”

“People say he loves them,” Bosaaso insisted.

She was as quick as her anger. “And what do you say?”

He felt pushed around a little and did not like whatever it was that she was doing to him, or to their friendship, but hoped he would somehow bring all this Kaahin-created fracas to a peaceful end by saying, “There’s really no earthly reason for you and I to have this kind of quarrel about someone neither of us cares about.” He paused thoughtfully and continued, “Let’s drop the subject altogether.”

But she wasn’t prepared to do so and asked, “Are you made of china, Bosaaso?”

At first he didn’t understand her meaning.

“Do you fall to pieces like a china cup when you have an argument with me?” she went on. “Do you smash into smithereens if someone shouts from the minaret of their rage to express their views?”

“Let’s drop it,” he suggested.

“No, we will not, damn you,” said Duniya.

He winced, remaining silent.

“I want you to tell me what you think about Kaahin, not what people say,” she shouted. “Give me your opinion, not other people’s.”

Speaking his words with a glassy attentiveness lest they too should break, he obliged. “He embarrasses me, and embarrasses Mire for bringing our names into disrepute, our names which he uses as though they were certificates of respectable contacts. And I agree with you, he hates women, in fact he hates himself, and his attitude towards women is testimony to this, a means by which he deceives himself.”

“What of the sticker pasted on the bumper of his car?” she asked.

“The one that reads ‘Kaahin: Women’s Cain,’ is that the one you mean?”

“That’s right.”

Saying nothing for a while, Bosaaso shrugged his shoulders, staring ahead, meditating. Finally he said, “We all have our adequate share of friends and relatives who embarrass us. Besides, he’s not really a friend of mine, only a friend of a friend. Even Zawadi is not responsible for his bad behaviour, I’ll absolve her of that.”

“The man is a misogynist,” said Duniya, “hiding behind fancy-looking cars and mountains of laundered money. It disturbs me to hear you use the word ‘love’ in such a context as Kaahin’s and the women whom he seduces with handouts of cash. He is unhealthy, chasing his lust without scruples.”

He could see the extinguished fire in her gaze. He moved in on her to exploit the peaceful mood, announcing, “Kaahin isn’t going to be your driving-instructor, given that he is almost three-quarters of an hour late. I am sorry I suggested it in the first place.”

Whereupon, Duniya began to undo the already threadbare laces of her canvas shoes with absolute caution lest they should snap. “And what’s it that you are doing?”

“Are we not staying at home?” She looked up at him.

“We’re doing no such thing,” he said.

She stared at him, puzzled.

“I am going to teach you myself.”

She gave one of her famous chuckles.

“Or don’t you have faith in my teaching ability?” he teased.

“It’s not that,” she explained. “But will you be able to snap at me and show your anger if I go into reverse when you ask me to move forward, or if I turn left when you tell me to turn right?”

“I promise you I won’t overlook any grave errors you commit,” he said, pleased with himself.

“Keep one thing in mind, Bosaaso. I’m not made of china and won’t break that easily Speak up whenever you have good reason to, and never bottle up anger. Cry from the loftiest minaret of your rage, if need be. It may be divine to be forgiving all the time, but it is definitely not human. Even God punishes those who earn His wrath.”

He gathered the tea things, then said, “Shall we go?”

“Let’s,” she said.

Duniya was at the wheel, murmuring something to herself as if taking a memory test. The car she and Bosaaso were in was parked in an open space, where many other learners were being given their driving instruction, and now they were facing an aged wall, at the rear of Genio Civile. Bosaaso had suggested she concentrate, but that was not what she was doing. She was asking herself why she was learning to drive when she had no car, and no hope of getting one. Was this going to be another nail hammered into the coffin of her dependence on him? Or was theirs simply another clichéd relationship, so to speak, in which women were the providers of food, shelter, peace at home and good company in exchange for the man’s offer of upward mobility, security and cash?

Some people sweat when they are nervous. Others get upset stomachs. Some freeze. Others fidget. Duniya was tense all right, so her ears filled with the compressed air of her inner anxiety, and she couldn’t hear a thing. Otherwise she was very calm and one wouldn’t have suspected her of being under any strain.

“Concentrate!” Bosaaso repeated.

“That’s precisely what I am doing, if you please,” she said.

He started from the beginning, naming the important parts of the car, one by one. It was as if he were giving each part he named a fresh lease on life, touching them where possible. He wanted her to know them by their names, he wanted her to remember their function, before moving the vehicle an inch. Now he touched the controls as he pointed them out, as he showed her how the gears operated. Presently he explained how the clutch functioned, and then he pressed the pedals; finally the brake and the accelerator.

Ideas were elbowing each other out, fighting for space in her head, a positive thought out-doing a negative one, or vice versa. She discovered to her surprise that Zawadi was making her presence felt. To rid her mind of Zawadi, Duniya said: “Did you know that my brother Abshir’s nickname used to be Scelaro?”

“Because he learnt things fast?”

She nodded.

After a short pause he said half-censoriously, “Concentrate!”

Duniya recited the names of the vehicle’s parts as he touched them. He was impressed. She did all this with tremendous speed and precision. Then she changed the gears while not moving, and went through the motions of driving through traffic, clutching the steering-wheel, one foot pressing the accelerator, the other alert, and close to both the brake and the clutch.

“How do you put it in reverse?” she asked.

He hesitated and was about to say, “Later,” but he changed his mind and showed her, the car not yet in motion. She repeated all he had told her, including his instructions about how to reverse. After a very heavy pause, she asked, “Are you ready?”

“I am, if you are,” he said, smiling.

“Your safety-belt, please,” she said.

They moved very slowly and after an appropriate lapse she shifted gears, apparently comfortable, with the ease and confidence of someone who had driven for years. Her lips were moving all the time. Was she praying? Or was she rehearsing the sequence of moves she would perform? The truth was surprisingly different, for Duniya kept saying to herself, If Zawadi can, so can I; if lots of stupid men can drive, so can I. All the same, the rest of her body was still like a statue at the centre of a spirited storm.

She stopped the vehicle without being told to. Neither said anything, they listened to the engine idle. Again, without being instructed, she switched off the engine, only to start it again instantly, and to drive further and further away from the circle their car tyres had made. As she slowed down, Bosaaso could discern signs of fatigue on her face.

Maybe it was easy to impress Bosaaso: he was a man in love. She stole a furtive glance in his direction and she thought she had caught his evasive look in the sieve of his gaze. Did he consider her to be foolhardy in taking all this head-on, without fear or worry? Why, Bosaaso had appeared preoccupied at the very moment when she had been most daring. What kind of a man was he? Cautious? Or was he likely to panic?

The car stalled now that she had lost her concentration. Some people cannot help smiling when a car, in which they are being driven by a learner, buck-jumps. Although unaware of it, Bosaaso smiled. To her, the smile was like a stab, and it hurt her. So she started running the engine faster, and then drove round and round until he was visibly worried, frightened. Then she cut off the engine.

Scarcely had he prepared to say something than she turned the key in the ignition and was off, this time reversing. The car buck-jumped. But she didn’t despair. She tried it again, repeating the same process. The rear of the vehicle wouldn’t obey her commands, swerving snakelike, going out of control, never straight as she had wanted it. Because Bosaaso didn’t speak, anxiety welled up inside her, certain that he thought she was being foolish. Finally, she stopped the car.

A long silence.

She remembered when she was four or five, remembered riding Zubair’s Arab stallion. She had taken a fright, for the beautiful horse’s flanks had been too wide-backed. Abshir, her brother, had been with her and she had held on to him, certain that no harm would come her way.

Bosaaso wondered aloud if she would like to practice more.

“Sure,” she said, accepting his offer.

When the car was moving, Duniya recalled a story Zubair, her first husband, had told her about a horse that had gone mad and wouldn’t stop running. The horse grew wings of madness and flew in an easterly direction, towards the sun, as though intending to reach its source. People said that jinns were in the saddle of such horses. Now what if the car refused to stop? What if one of Zubair’s wife’s relatives who are half-jinn and half-human were to take command of the steering-wheel? Not wanting to risk her life and his, she tested the brakes and was relieved to learn that they were in working order.

“Is anything the matter?” Bosaaso asked.

Duniya’s lips gave a tremor of self-blame, and she looked away and at her lap with the apprehensiveness of somebody who didn’t know how to apologize. Bosaaso didn’t want to find out what had upset her and was pleased to swap seats with her when she suggested they do so. He held his curiosity in check, and came round to the driver’s side of the ear, touching her as she shifted over to the passenger’s seat. Bosaaso put the vehicle into motion without saying a word.

When they were driving past Aw-Cumar’s store, where Duniya’s family had an account, she asked him to drop her off and to go ahead and wait for her at home. She gave him the key to let himself in, suggesting that he make himself comfortable if either Mataan or Nasiiba were not at home.

He promised her he would.

Aw-Cumar’s shop was a small six-by-ten cubicle, criss-crossed with wooden counters running from one end of the wall to the other, with a fold-away counter serving both as table and barrier. Beans, com, salt were visibly laid out in flat-bottomed boxes. The counter was as high as Duniya’s navel. There wasn’t anyone in the store today and she wondered where Aw-Cumar might be.

Then she heard his praying whispers, a sequence of sounds familiar to Muslims all the world over, consisting mainly of a stream of allit-eratives in the letter S, as part of the Bismillaahis without which prayers are considered sacreligious. Oblivious to what she was doing, she leaned against a ramshackle structure into whose wooden frame Aw-Cumar had hammered nails, so as to discourage idle-talkers from supporting their elbows on it while they held forth, wasting his time. Duniya made a pained sound when the nails pricked her, and hoped she didn’t irritate Aw-Cumar.

She discovered a moment later that she did not. He emerged from below the counter, issuing a salvo of Koranic blessings. When he rose to his full height, he was a mere five feet tall. Duniya didn’t respond immediately, letting the cluster of prayer-consonants clash and explode in the finale of a Semitic cacophony, conscious of the smile framing his friendly face. Islamic etiquette demanded that a woman not come into bodily contact with a man currently in communication with his Creator, women being impure. She held her ground and waited.

He saluted her several times, albeit from a civic distance. Before long he was saying, “Please accept my belated condolences for the premature passing away of the foundling. May God’s blessing be on your house, Amen!”

She didn’t know why she felt ridiculous, but she did. And she thanked him.

He uttered several more salvos, then touched his face with his forefingers; a little later his cupped hands moved down towards his chin, praying all the time, his lips astir with the letter S and on their heels a number of Arabic gutturals. Aw-Cumar proffered his hand at last, a hand which was soft and of an extraordinary roundness, no joints, no cartilage or bone anywhere. In fact he gave away his whole wrist as though he wished one to keep it for him while he dealt with some other business more lucrative than a hand-clasp. Duniya remarked to herself that he had a bracelet of extra flesh around what might once have been a wrist. And a circular expanse of finger-nails. “What can I do for you?” he said, his hand in hers, and as though he wouldn’t want it back.

“I’ve come to pay my respects, since I haven’t called round for a long time, and also to find out the situation with my account,” she said.

“It’s very kind of you,” he replied.

Meanwhile Duniya’s eyes went past him to take in the shop. In these days of galloping inflation, famines, foreign currency restrictions and corrupt market transactions, shops like Aw-Cumar’s had two opposing attitudes towards their clients. There were those whom they treated with special benevolence and to whom they sold hard-to-obtain goods. And there were those to whom they displayed empty shelves, to whom, shaking their heads, the store-owners would say that such and such an item had not been available on the market for months or years, whichever was the more credible. Duniya belonged to the category of customers whom he favoured. Moreover Aw-Cumar was attached to the twins, especially Nasiiba, with whom he often dealt, whose moods he could read, and from whom he occasionally bought some of Duniya’s US dollars at a concessionary rate.

“Do you have sugar?” she said.

He said neither yes nor no but, “Anything else?” while he was still in deep thought, maybe praying. She looked up at the gaping shelves in the hope that their emptiness might inspire her. “What about rice?”

But then both of them fell silent when a neighbour, clearly not one of Aw-Cumar’s favourite clients, came in and asked if there was any likelihood of his selling to her half a pound of sugar for any sum he wished to name. Aw-Cumar’s head shook with actorly sadness, saying, “I’m afraid I have no sugar, not even for my own family’s consumption.”

When the woman-customer had been gone a good few minutes, Aw-Cumar called one of his daughters who rushed in through the back door, coming as she did from the inner compound at the rear of the store, a highly valued property belonging to the shop. Her father’s hand lay on the young girl’s coxcomb-hairdo as he turned to Duniya asking, “How much sugar and how many kilos of rice would you like?”

“Three kilos of sugar, or is that too much to ask for?” she hesitated.

“Five?”

“Ail right, five.”

“And three kilos of rice, the best, imported from China?”

“Thank you,” she said.

And there he was, waiting for her to order anything her heart desired.

“Would you like some flour?” he inquired of her, when she couldn’t come up with any orders.

“Do you have flour?”

“Would ten kilos do?”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Would you like a kilo of raisins?”

“At times I wonder why you are so kind to me.”

“You’ve been kind, a mother to an abandoned baby,” he said, and after a pause continued, “And don’t think of thanking me, for what I have is yours and if I am in short supply myself then I cannot help it.” He scribbled something on a piece of paper, gave the chit to his daughter whose coxcomb he held onto as he said, “Take this to your stepmother and bring back what is written here. All right?” But he wouldn’t let go of the girl until he insisted that Duniya maybe ask for the universe and he, Aw-Cumar would serve it to her, right off his counter, heaven, hell and all.

“That’s all for now, thanks,” she stammered.

And the young girl rushed out of the store through the door in the rear, with a shriek of childish excitement. There were repeated cries of anger as she interrupted her sisters’ game of hopscotch.

“May I have the accounts book please?” said Duniya.

Aw-Cumar opened and closed a couple of drawers, looking for it. Duniya remembered an embarrassing incident when Mataan, thrilled at the arithmetic abilities of which he was proud, had taken it upon himself to do the totalling up of Duniya’s debts, discovering an ugly discrepancy. This caused both Aw-Cumar and Duniya a great deal of distress, and he swore he hadn’t done it deliberately From then on, it was agreed that Nasiiba and no one else would enter in the accounts book any sum owed to Aw-Cumar.

“Here,” he said presently, giving her the accounts book.

The sum owed to him was entered in Nasiiba’s hand in this exercise book, with one of its covers already torn off. Like a door hanging on a half-broken hinge, the other cover held, more or less, on the teeth of additional staples punched on the side. Nasiiba had scribbled in ink the words “Duniya & Family: Accounts.”

Opening and turning the pages Duniya discovered that all the bills had been settled by Nasiiba, all until a week ago. Duniya’s look was of a disturbed kind, noting to herself that perhaps the money in the Iranian Islamic magazine had a wicked story behind it.

Aw-Cumar said, “Is something worrying you?”

“No, nothing.”

“Please tell me what’s bothering you, because I can see your eyes going pale with preoccupation,” he said. “Let me assure you that your accounts book is clean like the slates of a saint at Judgement Day, not a single stain anywhere.”

Improvising, Duniya said, “I’ve come bearing sad news.”

“Oh?”

“We are moving out of the district.”

Aw-Cumar’s features displayed a genuine sorrow. “But we shall miss you!”

“The children and I will miss you too.”

He was a most discreet man. Duniya suspected that Aw-Cumar was in on the gossip being circulated in the neighbourhood, about a wealthy US-returned Somali who was infatuated with “our midwife.” But he made no reference to it, not even when he inquired if they knew where they would be moving.

When Aw-Cumar’s daughter brought back Duniya’s provisions in a large carrier bag advertising a brand of cigarettes, Duniya asked, “How much do we owe you for this blessed manna from the heavens of your kindness?”

His lips trembled with sums which he committed instantly to paper; finally he added the sums up in his head and gave her the total. Duniya entered and initialled it in the exercise book.

She was feeling ill at ease because she had lied to him. After all she had not come with the intention of buying any provisions, only to take a look at the accounts book Was this why she was becoming garrulous? And why didn’t she leave directly after she had received her supply of food? “My brother Abshir is paying us a visit shortly and we are very excited at the thought and eager to welcome him,” she volunteered.

“How long has it been since he was last here in Mogadiscio?” One might have thought he was talking about somebody he knew Maybe he remembered how often Abshir’s name came up in Duniya or Nasiiba’s conversations in a casual manner, particularly with regard to their provision of foreign currency, since he was the primary source.

“Long before the twins were born,” she said.

Aw-Cumar was a very kind man. “I would certainly like to make his acquaintance, although he has been but a name to me all these years,” he said.

Aw-Cumar’s daughter ran off to broadcast the news that Nasiiba’s mother was moving out of the district to the others who were still playing some kind of hopscotch. A moment later another little girl was scampering away from her hiding-place with the exciting news that Nasiiba’s uncle was coming to Mogadiscio soon. These took their toll of emotions and Duniya’s throat filled with tears and this made her voice very hoarse. “Thank you very much, Aw-Cumar,” she repeated, hardly able to say a word without pausing.

“Please don’t move out of the district without letting us know your new address, as we would like to keep in touch with you and your children, of whom we are terribly fond,” he said.

She promised she wouldn’t move without alerting them to the fact.

Entering her place which was a little under a hundred metres away, Duniya shouted “Hoodi-hoodi” and was expressly delighted to hear Bosaaso’s “Come in.” He joined her near the gate to help her carry in the provisions. Then he said anxiously, “I must fetch Nasiiba and Yarey.”

“And where are they?” she said, hoping he might tell her out of absent-mindedness.

“Ask them yourself when they are back,” he insisted.

“You know I won’t,” she said.

“Fair enough then,” he said, “for I won’t tell you.”

But she had the weird feeling they were at Bosaaso’s place, watching something on his video. A hostile expression clouded her features briefly. Then she told herself that she should have a high-handed word with Nasiiba. After all, Duniya wanted to put her house in order before Abshir’s arrival, and before making up her mind about Bosaaso.

“See you soon then,” she said, dismissing him that way.

And he was gone.

The meal that evening was a dull affair: red beans and rice, a commonplace dish, Mogadiscio’s staple nightly diet. It was Nasiiba’s garlic sauce that brightened things up, giving the food a sharper taste. Duniya wished she had made the meal more interesting, if only for Bosaaso’s sake. No doubt she appreciated his willingness to share whatever they were eating. Very humble of him, indeed.

Once they had eaten, Mataan excused himself saying he had homework to do. He went to his room, pushing his door shut, and remained quiet, maybe working, maybe not. Yarey yawned and yawned, she was bored and tired. But Nasiiba and Bosaaso wanted to talk. It felt as though they intended to save the world with their chatter from its current crisis of civil wars, drought and intellectual bankruptcy.

Duniya got to her feet, ready to leave. Bosaaso, deferential, looked from Nasiiba to Duniya and back and didn’t know how to act. “You don’t have to go. Let her. She’s writing a letter to her brother Abshir,” Nasiiba said.

Neither Duniya nor Bosaaso could think of anything to say for a time.

“In that case I’ll come for you in the morning,” he offered.

“There’s no need,” she said.

He looked worried. “Aren’t you going to work?” Nasiiba asked.

“I’ve arranged an alternative form of transport for work,” she said, sounding mysterious.

He was desperate as he said, “Won’t you be taking your second driving lesson tomorrow afternoon?”

“Yes, but after Nasiiba and I have gone house-hunting.”

“How exciting, Mummy to be looking for somewhere to live.”

“Can I come with you, Duniya?” said Yarey.

“Good night then,” Duniya said to Bosaaso.

“Good night.”

And to Yarey, “Come, my dearest. Come with me if you’re bored.”

Left alone, Nasiiba and Bosaaso talked and talked, whereas Yarey. fell asleep the instant her head touched the pillow. Duniya read for a while and then wrote a letter to Abshir, her brother.

My darling brother:

I write to you with a sense of urgency and because Dr Mire has told me that you are planning to pay me and my children a long-awaited visit. I can’t tell you how delighted I am to receive you, to welcome you with a pent-up love which has been treasured for you for years.

As I pen this I can overhear Nasiiba and Bosaaso’s conversation about mythical and religious tensions present in the notion of “return,” and I think of you and how much I’ve missed you, and how much I long for the day when we’ll be reunited, to share our happiness and our pains.

You will find me a changed woman. A letter such as this cannot tell you much. But I look forward to telling you everything myself. Please please please telegraph me care of the hospital where I can be reached, giving me the details of your departure from Rome and arrival here so we can come to meet you at the airport.

I’ve been made to promise to ask you to bring special gifts for your nieces and nephew. Attached please find a list drawn up by Nasiiba — but then again you may disregard them.

Your loving sister,

Dunya

Restless, Duniya could not sleep. Nasiiba and Bosaaso were still talking several hours later. Whereupon Duniya shouted to Nasiiba to take from her Abshir’s letter and give it to Bosaaso, who knew someone leaving for Rome the following afternoon. Bosaaso saw this as an indication that it was time he left, which he did.

The night echoed with his and Nasiiba’s good-night wishes.

14

Duniya is given a lift to work by Mataan on a borrowed motor scooter Later that day, before her driving lesson, Duniya goes house-hunting and in the process calls on Miski, Fariida’s sister.

A woman in her mid-thirties is watching a sunset in a dream setting. A younger woman, presumably her daughter, materializes from nowhere and blocks her view The older woman turns the other way as though uninterested, her gaze this time dwelling on several stray evening clouds migrating towards darkness.

Mataan had a beautiful mouth which was often open. His silences stretched long, like an unending road, straight, unbending, not at all desolate. He had a way of surrounding himself with wise silences and his eyes would have a remarkable vacuity behind them. One was tempted to comment on these when alone with him. Shy, quiet, tall and skinny, with his mouth ajar like a door pushed open by the breeze, Mataan might concentrate on a wart on one’s face, waiting, saying nothing, forever patient. More than his one-liners, it was his silences one remembered.

His twin sister’s silent pauses had in them blind curves and on encountering them one had to be on guard for fear of being ambushed. Thus would Duniya try to explain her different attitudes towards her children’s quiet moments.

Mataan now said, “I’ve borrowed a motor scooter, Mother, and can give you a lift to work. My classes today don’t start till after ten-thirty.”

She had heard him leave the house at the crack of dawn, maybe to collect the scooter from its owner. Most probably he had decided to borrow it after having overheard her conversation with Bosaaso the previous night, in which she had talked of arranging an alternative way of getting to work.

“Whose is the motor scooter, Mataan?” she asked.

“It belongs to the cousin of a friend, Mother,” he said.

It didn’t require much for her to conclude that the Vespa belonged to Waris’s cousin — Waris, Mataan’s woman-friend. And though he was standing out of Duniya’s vision now, she knew he was swallowing lumps of nerves. Nasiiba and Yarey had been gone for a quarter of an hour showering together, and in the intervening period Mataan had come to make his offer of a lift, knowing that his twin would be averse to his gestures. “Come closer so I can see you,” Duniya suggested, and when he did, she said, “I don’t wish to interfere in your private affairs, but do you think it’s wise of me to turn down Bosaaso’s offer only for you to borrow a motor scooter from someone else to take me to work?” In the mean-time she wrapped herself in a bedspread.

He said humbly, “I don’t know,” meeting her eyes for the first time.

“Whose is it really?”

“The scooter is owned by an older man who likes to borrow my bicycle, so he can keep fit. I seldom make the exchange, Mother.”

“I wish you wouldn’t borrow things for my sake,” Duniya said.

He looked away. After a while he turned and her eyes fell on his young face, and a thought crossed her mind, one she couldn’t explain: that Mataan looked like a son. Whereas Nasiiba put her in mind of a young woman likely to become a mother one day, Mataan had the look of a sturdy young tree, firm and steadfast as somebody’s young son. To be labelled “Mataan: a son!” like a clothes dummy of a tailor’s with a price tag on it. Duniya reasoned that he would surely eventually marry a woman older than him.

“How much does a new-motor-scooter cost?” she asked.

“You can’t get them because of foreign currency restrictions.”

“How much would a good second-hand one fetch?”

He was silent, then said, “Let’s first find a home to move to.”

Nasiiba and Yarey had come on the scene, so Duniya and Mataan adapted themselves to the new arrivals. Yarey was in a chatty mood. She said, “You must go to see an Italian film called The Tree of the Wooden Clogs. Nasiiba and I saw it yesterday and we loved it, didn’t we, Naasi?”

Duniya guessed that Yarey’s lines had been given her by Nasiiba and had been rehearsed to the last comma, question and exclamation mark. Mataan, too, suspected this to be the case.

Yarey went on, “And you must see the big house Bosaaso lives in all by himself, Duniya, a big garden, a very large kitchen, larger than this place we live in, the four of us.”

Mataan left in haste, and this disturbed Nasiiba. “What was he talking about, Mummy?” she asked.

To avert early morning confrontation between the twins, Duniya suggested that Nasiiba hurry, for it was impolite to make the taxi wait longer than absolutely necessary.

Nasiiba was of a mind to disregard her mother’s advice, and she repeated her question, “What was he talking about?”

“Mataan has borrowed a motor-scooter to give me a lift,” Duniya replied, regretting it the instant the words had left her lips.

Nasiiba was dismissive of the man who owned the Vespa, saying, “Do you know what people say?”

“No, what do they say?”

“The man is a homosexual, an old man in his fifties who prefers the company of younger boys. Did Mataan tell you that?”

There was the clichéd silence of a pin-dropping quality.

The quarrel was cut short by the arrival of the taxi taking Nasiiba and Yarey to their respective schools. Nasiiba opened the windows overlooking the road and shouted something to the man whom she called Axmad. Meanwhile she and Yarey stumbled into their school-uniforms, each reminding the other to be quick. “Remember we’re going house-hunting this afternoon,” Duniya said to Nasiiba.

“Right-oh.” Nasiiba mimicked an American film heroine dashing out of a room.

Mataan and Duniya had breakfast together, Mataan making the omelette and tea, and afterwards clearing the trays and doing the washing-up, including his sisters’. Duniya was undecided whether to wear her hair covered or uncovered. Given that she would be on a motor scooter and not in a car, would her hair be a scatter of plaits, waving in all directions, like the hands of a bad swimmer drowning? Thinking of their safety (she was actually thinking about seat-belts as well as Bosaaso), she wondered if it was possible to find helmets at such short notice. It was too late in the day to worry about it.

“Tell me, do you like Bosaaso?” she said to Mataan.

Mataan hesitated, then said, “I do — really.”

“What do you like about him?”

“I feel comfortable with him.”

“Comfortable in what sense?” He appeared to be having difficulty with his words; he stammered, every consonant proving a hurdle. The brown in his eyes darkened.

She had almost given up on getting any answer out of him as she asked, “Do you like him as much as you liked Taariq when you were a lot smaller?” And she felt foolish saying this.

“As it happens, I always prefer having friends older than me, and Bosaaso is the sort of man whose friendship I would tend to cultivate, someone whose learning I would emulate. I don’t regret my closeness to Taariq, and hold no resentful feelings towards him.”

“What would you do if you were me?” she said.

He sat forward, as though a gun had been pointed at his nape. “In what regard, Mother?”

“Would you marry him?”

Mataan’s tongue was active, not in the act of speech but scouring the inside of his mouth as if searching for a clue there. “Knowing you, Mother,” he said at last, “you’ll make up your mind one way or the other on the spur of the moment. So I don’t know what to say.”

Somewhere in the labyrinth of Duniya’s mind there was a cul de sac. She said, “People say that I’m after his money.”

“People say all sorts of wicked things,” he echoed.

“Doesn’t that worry you?”

His lips swelled out in handsome protrusion as he thought about this. He said, “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but what has Bosaaso got that you could be after by way of money, a Green Card or property? I doubt very much if his income is higher than Uncle Abshir’s, who’s prepared to give you all you need, and foot all our educational bills anywhere in the world.”

“All the same, people’s tongues are busy, spreading evil gossip.”

“I wouldn’t worry about them if I were you,” he said. “They say terrible things about the man I borrowed the scooter from. It’s his affair if he is homosexual; what makes his sexual taste their business I don’t know. Some people say unkind things about Waris on account of the age difference between us.” His lips might have been those of an infant who had just been breast-fed, and not sufficiently.

“You love her, don’t you?”

An open mouth is like an open door: one is tempted to look in. Mataan’s had a beautiful set of teeth, with a gap in the centre of the top row. Women never failed to comment on his fanax, wishing it was Nasiiba who had it, for it is commonly believed that girls look prettier when they have gaps in their teeth. Such good-looking features are an asset assuring women of men’s attention and marriage. And Nasiiba would retort: Who wants to marry anyway?

“You don’t have to answer my question,” said Duniya.

This was meant to prod him, considering that he was susceptible to her probings. “I think I’m in love with her, yes,” he said, and he was immediately ill at ease.

“Shall we leave?” she asked.

He stood up, tall, slim and shy. “Are you ready?”

She too got to her feet. She felt uncomfortable in the slacks she had on, her navel bulge an irritation. But she wasn’t going to change into a dress or her uniform which she had stuffed into her bag; wearing either would be inconvenient on a scooter. Mataan was waiting for her by the Vespa, modest as the dull, brown and humble grey colours which he liked.

“Here we are,” he said, kick-starting the machine.

Duniya sat side-saddle. It was the first time she had ridden a motor scooter and it scared her. Mataan had to stop two or three times, to remind her that it was important to co-ordinate their bodily balance, otherwise they might tip over and hurt themselves. “It’s like a boat with an outboard engine,” he said, repeating what the owner had told him. But Duniya had no idea what he was talking about, never having been in such a contraption.

However, she enjoyed the ride once they got going, the wind blowing in her face, her ears filling with air, her head empty of all worrying thoughts, save the new pleasant sensation of being on a scooter and no longer scared. It was like a new-found freedom. She felt light. The roads were lined on both sides by people waiting endlessly for transport which never arrived. In her mind, these people had arrived to wave to the two of them riding past, like a presidential motorcade receiving a tumultuous welcome.

There was something scary about the experience. The sky was out of bounds and the earth appeared either too far below her or else too close to her feet, which hung down, almost touching it. There seemed many more potholes than she remembered encountering when in Bosaaso’s car. On the other hand, they could be spotted well in advance, and be avoided. Duniya’s eyes were active and registered the details of people’s clothes. “I feel wonderful,” Duniya shouted. “It feels wonderful.”

“What?” shouted Mataan.

She repeated what she had said, adding, “We must buy a scooter.” He didn’t show any reaction; maybe he hadn’t heard her suggestion.

Her sides began to ache and her muscles stretched with acute pain from having sat awkwardly, like someone holding back her weight away from another person sharing a limited space. None the less this was decidedly more fun than the humiliation of being in the company of somebody one didn’t know. In another sense she was happy to make the point to Bosaaso that she had alternative ways of getting to work, wasn’t totally reliant on his good-will and kind gestures, thank you.

“Look at them,” Duniya said.

He slowed down and asked, “Look at whom?”

“Look at them dressed in these exquisitely tailored clothes!” and she pointed at the women and men on either side of road, potential passengers of buses that never arrived, thumb-raisers for lifts that were never offered. “I wonder if they’re on their way to a wedding or to a seasonal festivity in their office. How can they care so much about their appearances when they’re penniless?” Her ribs pained from her long shout, her lungs ran out of the breath she could generate. She paused, then after a while continued, “Both as individuals and as governments, we Somalis, better still, we Africans, tend to live beyond our means.”

They rode in silence until they reached the hospital entrance, and she got off, happy that the journey was at an end. Her feet had grown numb, but the rest of her body felt light, as though she had just descended the gangway-ladder of an aircraft. Mataan raised the scooter on its stand and got down to give her her handbag, although his satchel remained slung over the handle-bars.

Barely able to hear her own voice she said, “I want you to change three hundred and fifty US dollars for me, Mataan dear,” and she gave him seven fifty-dollar bills, recalling to her memory all that had taken place the previous few days, including the discovery of the foundling, her meeting with and falling in love with Bosaaso, and the wads of money which she found tucked away in Nasiiba’s Iranian magazine. “We’ll need some cash when we go house-hunting this afternoon, in case a landlord insists on an immediate deposit. Don’t go to Uncle Qaasim if you can help it.”

“But I can’t think of anyone else,” he confessed.

“Ask around,” she suggested. “Good rate, safe person. I’m sure one of your friends will come up with a name. After all, this is good money, what Nasiiba calls ‘Bosaaso-money’ nowadays.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

She walked away, wishing him good day and advising him to take care.

Bosaaso came to fetch her after work, and after exchanging the formula greetings they remained quiet. The images pouring into Duniya’s mind refused to cohere. Maybe it was to do with a nervous bug in the pit of her stomach, a worried reaction to a hasty decision to serve the quit-notice on herself. There was no going back, she would have to move out, find some other place. But where?

Where did one start? The city of Mogadiscio expanded right before her eyes, growing a thousand times in size, although somehow she convinced herself that she should not be easily discouraged. It was a pity that newspapers did not carry notices advertising small flats to rent, only large villas intended for foreign residents of the metropolis, who were willing to pay their Somali landlords in hard currency. For locals, news about the availability of vacant accommodation, like other information, was circulated primarily by word of mouth in this essentially oral society.

Her pride and instinct for self-preservation advised against involving Bosaaso in her search. She did not have her own means of transport and taxis were impossible to find. Besides, he was willing to take her anywhere. Or was this exploitative?

It was when she thought of herself as a woman and thought about the female gender in the general context of “home” that Duniya felt depressed. The landmarks of her journey through life from infancy to adulthood were marked by various “stations,” all of them owned by men, run and dominated by men. Did she not move from her father’s home directly into Zubair’s? Did she not flee Zubair’s right into Shiriye’s? There was a parenthesis of time, a brief period when she was her own mistress and the runner of her station, so to speak, as a free tenant of Taariq’s, only for this to cease when they became husband and wife. Meanwhile, her elder brother Abshir’s omnipresent, benevolent, well-meaning shadow fell on every ramshackle structure she built, pursuing every move she made, informing every step she took: Abshir being another station, another man. Now there was Bosaaso. Morale delta storia? Duniya was homeless, like a great many women the world over. And as a woman she was property-less.

Over lunch, not speaking to anyone, not even Nasiiba (who had prepared today’s meal), nor Yarey (who had attempted to drag her into their conversation), Duniya recalled how often she had postponed looking for her own home, away from her half-brother Shiriye’s, where she and her twins had lived in virtual terror and humiliation. It was thanks to being misdirected by a neighbour (who might have been Marilyn’s grandmother for all she could tell) that she had knocked on the wrong door, Taariq’s. And he had taken pity on a homeless woman, with twins to raise. Would someone take pity on her today, being driven by a man in such a handsome car?

“Why, you look so miserable. Cheer up, Mummy!” Nasiiba said.

Her sadness long as her chin, Duniya replied, “Give me one reason why I should.”

The twins exchanged glances, resting ultimately on Bosaaso. This was lost on no one, save Yarey, who was busy dismantling a Parker pen belonging to Bosaaso, with nobody telling her not to ruin it.

As if setting the theme of a discussion, Duniya said, “The simple fact is that I am a homeless woman, and there is no getting away from it.”

Before long, the group began to talk at length of the notion of homelessness which, according to Bosaaso, had its origin in the myth of the displaced Adam, not Eve. This was challenged by Nasiiba, who argued that in Islam there was no such myth as the fall of man. There was the wandering figure of a migrant, in the Islamic notion of Hijra, which may also be interpreted as an act of a pious Muslim fleeing persecution. In an ideal Islamic society, the mosque is the place where the homeless go.

“Not homeless women, surely,” interjected Duniya.

Mataan affirmed, “That’s right.”

“In an ideal Islamic society…,” began Nasiiba.

“In which case there’d be fewer homeless women,” said Duniya, “perhaps because of the multiplicity of wives men are allowed to retain as their dependants or concubines.”

Sensing the tension building, Bosaaso changed the subject from the homeless in Islamic societies to the homeless in New York, men and women without shelter of their own, who slept under bridges, on flattened cardboard boxes serving as mattresses. Duniya remembered being shown such people in the environs of the Stazione Termini, the main railway station in Rome. Nearby there was a piazza called Independenza, the Somalis’ and the Eritreans’ meeting-place in the Italian capital. Duniya wondered why it was that foreigners and the homeless congregated round departure- or arrival-points in their country of economic exile. There was no denying that expatriates living in Mogadiscio were prone to go to the airport at the slimmest pretext to welcome or bid farewell their travelling compatriots. Somalis used to turn up in large numbers at Fiumicino, Rome’s international airport, whenever a Somali Airlines flight arrived or departed.

In response to a question from Mataan, Bosaaso said, “There are more homeless people in the city of New York than there are official residents of Mogadiscio, Somalia’s capital. The figure is shocking.”

“Truth is always embarrassing,” commented Nasiiba.

“In fact,” Bosaaso continued, “there’s recently been a controversy surrounding a United Nations film about the homeless in the world. You’d be surprised to know that some US Congressmen and Senators tried to prevent the public viewing of this documentary. And I take it, you’ve also heard about the Polish government’s gift of blankets to the homeless in New York?” and he glanced in Duniya’s direction.

Duniya admitted she hadn’t heard of it.

Tentatively, Nasiiba said, “Didn’t it all begin with President Reagan dispatching tinned milk to Poland, after the Chernobyl disaster, a gift meant to pack an ideological punch? Poland versus the Soviet Union. It turned out to be an unfortunate joke against Reagan, apparently, because the milk was found to be bad when opened. In response — tell me if I’m wrong, anyone,” continued Nasiiba, enjoying everyone’s attention, “the Polish government shipped blankets to New York’s homeless, but the parcels were addressed care of the White House. Ha, ha, ha!”

“And what did the Americans do?” Duniya inquired.

“Newspaper headlines,” said Bosaaso. “That was all.”

Mataan said, “And yet we are under the mistaken impression that being poor, famine-stricken and homeless are phenomena associated with underdevelopment, shortage of hard currency and so on. It’s disturbing to think that we, too, will have a million homeless people in our cities if we become technologically advanced.”

“It’s tragic,” agreed Duniya.

The discussion shifted from the specific to the general, then back to particular economic and social realities, and everyone agreed that the homeless were mostly people of colour, or old, that black women tended to have the strength to survive, despite their enormous burdens, better than their male counterparts.

Asking no one in particular, Mataan said, “You know the Islamic concept, xabs?”

“Xabs is interpreted by Islamic scholars as the right of obedience,” explained Mataan, “although the word shares its root with another understood to mean detention. The point is that women aren’t permitted to leave their husbands’ homes without their husbands’ prior notification, and any woman who violates this right may be described as rebellious. The home, therefore, the veil and the fact that women can’t go out of the house, say, to work in an office or as a nurse in a hospital: these come under xabs: the right of obedience. A homeless woman is one who has no husband or a male relation to provide her with shelter.”

There was a brief pause and Duniya, exploiting it, wondered aloud whether Yarey, who had fallen asleep, should be taken to bed where she would be more comfortable. At the mention of her name, Yarey’s head rose like that of an infant not yet endowed with speech, who responds to the mention of its name in a conversation. “Do you never tire,” she said, “Nasiiba, you talk and talk and talk?”

“I wasn’t talking.” Nasiiba came to her own defence.

“When I fell asleep you were speaking, and when I woke up you still were,” said Yarey. “I thought you said you were going to Miski’s?”

Duniya looked from Yarey to Nasiiba. “What about Miski?”

Yarey was now wide awake. “Naasi promised the two of you would go to Miski’s and hand over to her a list of things I want Uncle Abshir to bring me.”

“What’s all this?” asked Duniya of Nasiiba.

Bosaaso, sounding eager, asked, “But when is he due here?”

Duniya’s lips trembled as if saying a brief prayer.

In the meantime, Miski counted her days and nights, consulting her watch before answering Bosaaso’s question, “I’m flying back late tonight. That means well be on the same flight tomorrow afternoon.”

“I’m really looking forward to seeing Abshir,” said Bosaaso.

Duniya stared at Nasiiba who was engrossed in reading Uncle Abshir’s letter. To make sure she would not be disturbed by anyone, Nasiiba sat apart from everybody, like a cat unwilling to share its food with others.

“You’re moving out of here?” Duniya asked.

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it. Where am I moving to?” Miski asked.

Duniya hoped Nasiiba would say something, explain where she had got the news from, since it had been she who had said Miski had decided to move. But Nasiiba’s attention was totally devoted to Abshir’s letter.

“Perhaps Fariida understands that you are moving out,” ventured Duniya.

“When does Fariida understand anything?” said Miski decisively. “And pray where would I move to?”

Nasiiba interrupted her reading. She looked first at her mother, then at Miski to whom she said, “Do you know if there’s a vacant flat in the Mocallim Jaamac area, in the centre of the city, Miski?”

“Yes, there is,” said Miski.

“And doesn’t the vacant flat belong to a relation of yours?”

“It belongs to my former fiance’s father, that’s right.”

Certain that her mother and Miski could take it from there without her help, Nasiiba lost interest in the conversation. Returning to reading her uncle’s letter, she sat as if impervious to the world around her, her feet tucked under her, and looking pleased.

After a long pause, Duniya asked Miski, “Do you think we could take a look at that flat? We are very anxious to find one?”

“But why are you moving out of yours?” Miski asked.

“It’s too complicated a story to tell you now,” said Duniya.

Miski was suddenly sad. “I hope it hasn’t anything to do with Fariida’s baby?” she said. “It wasn’t my idea that she abandon it.”

Bosaaso sat up as if stung by a black ant, but he said nothing.

“Our moving out of Qaasim’s house hasn’t anything to do with Fariida or her baby,” said Duniya.

Nasiiba interrupted her reading to look from her mother to Miski and to say, “Mummy’s lying to you. The truth is Fariida’s baby has everything to do with our moving out of Uncle Qaasim’s house. But it is a long story as Mummy said. I promise to tell you when we’re alone and Mummy and Bosaaso are gone.” Then, as if nothing untoward had taken place, Nasiiba resumed her reading.

No movement, no sound, only a drift of disturbed eyes. Perhaps amused, Bosaaso could not tear his away from Nasiiba. To describe Duniya as embarrassed and leave it at that would be a distortion. Nevertheless, she wasn’t angry with Nasiiba, if anything she was pleased. Uppermost in her thoughts was the prospect of his retaining faith in her, a prospect causing her great distress. What if the poor man thought Duniya had known about the foundling’s identity all along and hidden it from him? Would he believe it if she had told him that she hadn’t discussed the topic with either Nasiiba or Fariida, or for that matter Miski? Bosaaso meant a lot to her, and she didn’t want him to lose trust.

Perhaps shaken by the revelation, Bosaaso’s gaze evaded hers, dwelling on the floor ahead of him, dazed. But he didn’t appear totally abandoned in the ship-wreck of new discoveries when he looked up and their eyes locked in an embrace of acknowledged grins. He had hope, Duniya thought, he still had love for her in his look.

Encouraged by this, she said to Miski, “Do you believe that any initial interest in your relation’s city flat is even justified?”

“It has enough space for you and the twins, if that’s what you’re after,” answered Miski.

“There are four of us, plus of course Abshir visiting.”

Wincing, Miski didn’t ask why there were four of them, not three, and her hesitation left traces of a tremor on her lips. The young woman had weak knees, a meek heart that was as large as it was generous. Perhaps Fariida had been blamed wrongly for being the one who had introduced Miski’s former fiance, the son of the owner of the city flat Duniya was currently interested in, to the girl whom he had made pregnant and in that event married.

Now Miski collapsed into an armchair. This was turning into a difficult scene for anyone to handle; and as if this was the only action she was capable of undertaking, Miski grimaced. Then she said, “The city flat has two rooms, facing a large courtyard, a small garden, with a kitchen and two outside toilets, meant as part of servants’ quarters which never got built. The rooms are very big, each equipped with its separate bathroom-cum-toilet, bidet and other amenities, and they’re airy, the ceilings high. Apparently they once belonged to the Catholic Mission’s Holy See office in Mogadiscio.”

“Do you know how much the landlord is asking?”

“It’s very expensive.”

“How expensive?”

“How much can you afford?”

Duniya mentioned a sum.

Hesitation made Miski’s nose twitch. “I’ll try to get the keys from the proprietor for that amount, saying I’m moving in, or maybe I’ll tell him the truth. I hope honesty pays generous dividends.”

“Let’s pray to God I can afford it,” said Duniya.

As though on cue, Nasiiba said, “Mummy, Uncle Abshir has sent you lots of cash, three thousand US dollars.” The young girl gave herself the luxury to pause, get up and walk over to where her mother sat. Standing over her, she went on, “Here’s the money in this envelope, I’ve counted it myself. And here in the thinner envelope is a long letter containing just one important piece of news: he’s arriving the day after tomorrow, in the afternoon, on the Somali Airlines flight from Rome — not tomorrow afternoon, as Miski said.”

Duniya received the envelopes, thanked Miski for bringing them.

Whereupon Nasiiba urged her, “I suggest you go now, Mummy, taking Bosaaso with you, poor man, who’s been out of it all. Miski, after her shower, will take me to the landlord and I’ll bring the key when I come home. If the flat has been taken, so be it; we’ll have to think again, look again.”

Duniya could not ignore the wisdom of Nasiiba’s suggestions. When as a bonus she was offered a young, stronger hand to help her rise to her feet, up and out of the sagging armchair into which she had sunk, she took it gratefully.

Bosaaso appeared relieved to be leaving and as she assisted him, Nasiiba teased him (calling him “Old-bones”), adding, “You two give each other your driving lessons and leave us to deal with the flat.”

Miski looked sad.

As they said their goodbyes, Duniya’s anxiety showed all over her face. It was not going to be easy to convince Bosaaso that she had no knowledge of the foundling’s identity before this afternoon.

Duniya had had only a quarter of an hour to practise her driving, when, with the suddenness Bosaaso began associating with her, she brought the vehicle to an abrupt halt. She said she wanted to talk, explain all that had happened, including the reason why she hadn’t told him all that she suspected she knew about the foundling’s identity. It was up to him to trust her or not.

She started the story from the beginning, omitting nothing, arguing that the foundling had become and would remain for her a symbol uniting the two of them. Would their affection for each other survive such self-questioning?

Nature had supplied Bosaaso with an accommodating spirit. He listened attentively, did not speak nor move any part of his body for a long time. Then his nose twitched involuntarily, as if overcome by a musky sexual odour or something as vital, as immediate. “Will you marry me, Duniya?” he said.

The question did not surprise her; she had expected it for quite some time. Nor did its timing disturb her. Rather, it was the way he spoke it, as though it were an ordinary request, as pedestrian as “Please pass the salt.” Silent, like someone determined to set a hurt bone, Duniya reasoned that he must have worked on the question so thoroughly that he botched it.

“Will you take me home, please?” she said.

“Of course,” he replied.

They swapped places and he drove her home.

GENEVA (UPI, AFP)

Foreign donors from more than 80 governments and relief organizations have pledged 300 million dollars to cover Mozambique’s emergency needs for the next calendar year. More money is likely to be promised in the coming months to bring the total to 400 million dollars, the sum requested by the Mozambique government.

The International Donors’ Conference gave its full backing to the Maputo government’s argument that the chief cause of the country’s economic crisis was the war being waged by the Mozambican rebel movement, assisted by the USA and South Africa.

15

In which Duniya meets Caaliya, the woman with the pseudo-cyesis problem, and learns of Caaliya’s pregnancy. Later that afternoon, Duniya is given her first swimming lesson at the Centro Sportivo, where she meets Fariida.

It was clinic day for Duniya.

The beggars begged and chanted; and the poor pregnant outpatients gave what they could ill-afford in the hope of having uncomplicated deliveries. The women sat in close formation, facing in the same direction. Duniya moved to and fro, filling in forms, several other nurses helping her with the assignment.

Today there were not many patients and the nurses talked of taking a mid-morning break and maybe finishing the day’s work by noon. The doctor on duty was an obstetrician named Cawil, who had a very high opinion of himself He spoke of no one but himself, telling how many deliveries he had assisted, giving himself an extraordinary ratio of success. He didn’t like Duniya, whom he made redundant on the days he was in charge of the clinic, assigning her the most boring jobs. She had the strength of mind to overlook his meanness.

Just before the mid-morning break, the woman Caaliya came wanting to speak. There seemed to Duniya a difference in her behaviour as well as her physical posture, although the exact nature of the change was indeterminate.

“I’d like you to take a look at this,” Caaliya was saying, and she offered Duniya a piece of paper, decorated with a doctor’s illegible scrawl. Duniya received the indecipherable chit.

“That’s Dr Mire’s hand, believe it or not,” said Caaliya.

Duniya studied the coded mysteries. “What does it say?”

“It confirms beyond any doubt that I am with child,” said Caaliya.

Duniya made as if to walk away, but didn’t.

“You don’t believe me?”

Duniya’s face seemed to prepare for the onset of a sneeze, though it was not a sneeze that made her twinge, it was the discovery of a fellow-feeling, a sudden closeness to Caaliya, at the thought that this woman might be truly pregnant. “Have you seen any other doctor?” she asked.

Again Caaliya delved into her bag searching for the Chinese evidence of her incredible story: the story of a woman who had the persistent charm of collecting any piece of paper a doctor had scribbled on, who carried them as evidence of her motherhood, in much the way a mad person might show a document proving his sanity; Caaliya who had insisted for years that she was pregnant — now at last she was!

During the break, Duniya met one of the Chinese doctors in the corridor. It amused her to think what beastly appellation the Chinese might give to a year in which Caaliya did become pregnant, a year in which Duniya fell in love, a year in which Abshir confirmed he was coming to visit. On her way back to the clinic she ran into Dr Mire. Since neither seemed to be in great haste, they spoke for a while and she gave him news of Abshir’s impending arrival. She invited him to dinner with them the following night. Then she asked if it was true that Caaliya was indeed pregnant.

“She is,” he answered.

Duniya said nothing for fear of sounding foolish.

“The human body has its inherent mysteries and one cannot always account for its behaviour, neither are all its self-expressions and manifestations an open book to medical practitioners. Maybe she wants to be a mother so much she will become one.”

“But why is it necessary to give her a To-whom-it-may-concem testimonial?”

“Well, she asked me to give her a document stating that she was pregnant. Something to show to her co-wife, I suspect.”

Duniya let a soft smile descend on her face, like a bird alighting on a leafless tree. Then without so much as a “Good day,” Mire nodded in her direction and walked away at the very instant she had prepared to allude to what was happening between her and Bosaaso. It was just as well, she thought, and returned to the clinic.

Soon it was noon and two hours later she was at home preparing lunch. Bosaaso came to take her and Nasiiba to the Centro Sportivo for her first swimming lesson.

Duniya had difficulty getting her feet off the bottom of the swimming-pool and was incapable of controlling her balance. She remembered her dream from the previous night in which she was a sparrow. She had stood guard at the entrance to a cave. Afterwards, a large bird arrived. This giant new arrival had an illuminated disc in its beak and this he gave to Duniya. She was squinting when she awoke and her tongue had been taken hostage by her own teeth, which bit into it until blood was drawn; and she was pale with fright.

When she jumped into the pool at the Centro Sportivo, it was late afternoon. Marilyn was her swimming-instructor, and Nasiiba was rather irritable, like a parent who had brought a child to an adults’ party. Duniya attributed this tension to the peculiar situation in which they found themselves: she was the only woman her age, all the others being Nasiiba’s peers. Some were training for an All-Africa swimming event scheduled to take place in West Africa, so Duniya was asked to keep to one end of the pool, to stay as far as possible out of the trainees’ way.

Marilyn showed immense tact. She told Duniya for the nth time, “It’s really very simple, if you follow my instructions. Please concentrate and do as I say.” But Duniya soon lost concentration, and her eyes followed Marilyn’s wandering gaze which unfailingly took in the breadth and width of the entrance to the pool. Marilyn and Nasiiba seemed to be watching out for a visitor. Who? “Let’s try again,” Marilyn suggested patiently.

Duniya couldn’t trust her ability to stay afloat. Her feet would drop into a deeper hole in the water, and the water swallowed, as if gulping several mouthfuls of Duniya, whose eyes were of no use, whose ears of no help, whose splashing noises were scandalously loud and clumsy, like a child’s.

Panic justifies flight, and one flees, thought Duniya. But her fear of drowning was heavier on the heart than anything she could imagine. And when least expected, her feet would fail to reach the ground. Whenever anyone laughed, she thought it was at her. She believed she was making a spectacle of herself, but began to relax only when they were at the shallower end of the pool, where she could support herself on her feet. “Please give me a moment to catch my breath,” she pleaded to Marilyn.

“Take your time,” said Marilyn.

Duniya blamed herself for not having talked everything through before hurling herself into the pool Before her first driving lesson she had gone over the basics with Bosaaso, unrushed, so she understood the theory before she started the engine. Here, it was different. She felt humiliated by the despicable remarks some of the young boys and girls were making; felt unprotected from the onslaught of unabashed youth, uncared for by Nasiiba, who had vanished God knows where. Marilyn was a friendly and sweet girl, but Duniya couldn’t depend on her totally; Marilyn was pretty, but with little depth and, in a certain sense, inarticulate when it came to explaining the theory of swimming, taking someone else through the first steps. Teaching Duniya was a secondary activity to both Marilyn and Nasiiba, it seemed to Duniya. For whom were they waiting, she wanted to know, why were their eyes focused on the entrance to the pool?

“I am not waiting for anybody,” Marilyn replied.

“Then why are you and Nasiiba looking up anxiously at the entrance all the time?” asked Duniya, curious.

Marilyn’s shoulders shrugged as though of their own accord, “Ask Nasiiba.”

She was that kind of girl, Marilyn. For her, Nasiiba was the leader, there was nothing else to it. She did what Nasiiba bid her do. Duniya was sure Marilyn knew whom they were expecting. Some secrets are more important than those in whom they are confided. In the ears of her imagination, the older woman imagined her daughter telling Marilyn a secret and then instructing her not to divulge it, adding, “Just teach her to swim and be sweet to her.”

Earlier, in the changing-rooms, Nasiiba’s adept hands had helped Duniya squeeze into a swimming suit borrowed from Fariida. Duniya had felt like a bride being given the ritual bath and scented massage. Nasiiba had said, “You’ll lose weight. You’ll leave behind in the swimming-pool a minimum of two kilos today, I promise you.” Nasiiba and Marilyn had escorted her into the water, like bridemaids attending her at a wedding ceremony. As Duniya’s feet had touched the water, she had been frightened. Nasiiba had said, “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Mummy, nothing to worry about. Close your eyes and jump in, and by the time you open your eyes, you’ll be at the other end of the pool.”

Duniya watched young girls entering the pool with the ease with which she had walked into her marriages. Hadn’t she done just that: closed her eyes, and found herself married to Zubair, to Taariq?

And then her eyes fell on Fariida coming through the entrance. Fariida was walking with a waddle, her feet shuffling, like a senile person with a bad back All activity seemed to cease and a moment of silence fell on the whole place. Some of the girls congregated round Fariida, noisy like summer flies at a halva party. Fariida’s answer to the question “Where have you been lately?” was that she had gone mountain-climbing in the north and had fallen off a cliff, ending up with a slipped disc, forced to lie on her back since. Fariida’s friends left a pathway open for her, commiserating with her as she walked past them on her heavy feet. They had known her as an able athlete who twice had stripped the title-holder of the swimmer’s crown. (Duniya would learn later from Nasiiba that when Fariida went to East Africa with Qaasim, the story was that she had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.)

It didn’t take long for the hubbub to die down. Some of the girls gathered in groups in order to exchange the latest gossip. Some said that Fariida had been pregnant and had aborted the baby; some insisted the tale was as tall as the mountain the young woman was credited to have climbed.

Then Nasiiba re-appeared and brought Fariida to meet her mother, who chose to stay in the water, at the edge of the pool. It was disconcerting to pretend that she had seen her recently. So they chatted, feeling awkward. For the first few minutes of their conversation, Duniya avoided looking Fariida in the face. Displaying signs of discomfort, the younger woman crouched by the pool, and Duniya dared not leave the water for fear that she would develop cold feet and abandon the idea of learning to swim. In the meantime, her costume tightened round her body like a boa constrictor.

It was then that Nasiiba, adept at organizing other people’s lives, suggested, “Why don’t you join us later? Fariida and I will lie by the pool. You do what you’ve got to do, and we’ll do what we must.” To Marilyn, Nasiiba said, “Please go on teaching Mummy to swim.” Watching Fariida shuffle away, Duniya thought that she had lost weight, but not her long-limbed charm. She had lovely eyes, was taller than Miski and a great deal handsomer. She was several months older than the twins. Fariida had on a baggy frock, perhaps one she had worn when pregnant with the foundling.

Duniya now saw the water she stood in as that of afterbirth and innocence. She recalled Nasiiba purporting that Duniya did not know her children well, or what they were up to. Meeting Fariida was an eye-opener for her, an encounter worth remembering.

Now that Fariida and Nasiiba had receded into the darkening backdrop, Marilyn’s anxious voice was saying, “If you’ll relax and follow my instructions, Duniya …”

“I sink like an anchor whenever I lift my feet off the floor of the pool,” Duniya said.

“Don’t think about it.” Marilyn was getting into her stride, as if she had gained courage from the contact with Fariida and Nasiiba. “That’s the first thing about swimming. Let your body take care of itself, let it float when it will, let it drop anchor if it wants to.”

Duniya nodded her head, like a child who has been convinced that a measles injection will not hurt. It might have been the younger woman’s tone of voice that finally did the trick, but Duniya felt hypnotized. Smiling sweetly and not thinking, she put her full trust in Marilyn.

“Now!” said Marilyn, meaning start. She placed her open palm, wide as a pitta bread, under Duniya’s body, lifting it up, like an acrobatic skater on a rink vibrant with enthusiastic applause. “That’s superb,” she encouraged. “Good, very good!”

There was silence, and Duniya thought everyone was watching her.

“This is a success story,” Marilyn was saying.

And Duniya was thinking, I am the story, I am success.

Duniya hated failure. She didn’t want to cause Marilyn or Nasiiba any embarrassment. Finally, her body found its balance, and her feet made the right noises, her arms splashing in and out of the water. Under Marilyn’s supervision she swam back and forth, becoming more and more confident, and urged on by the success story her body was telling.

Then Marilyn sensed a tremor of worry in Duniya’s body. It was like a traveller coming upon a sudden bend in a road, a turning not signposted. Marilyn placed her outspread palm further up, closer to Duniya’s chest. A little later, Duniya’s body regained its lost balance. She told herself that to the one who had reached the summit of Everest, no mountain was high enough. She thought of herself as the axis around which the whole universe rotated, which was why she couldn’t afford to go down, sink or abandon ship. She was glad Marilyn had corrected the small error in good time, and with tact. Then they swam together back and forth, staying out of the way of the other swimmers. Suddenly Marilyn’s guiding hand vanished like a magician’s handkerchief and Duniya splashed with total abandon. Standing on the tip of her toes, she said, once she caught her breath, “That was something, wasn’t it, Marilyn?”

Marilyn made the immodest claim that she had taught Nasiiba and Fariida to swim.

Duniya did not speak her thoughts.

“Where are they?” Marilyn wondered. Then she pointed, “There.”

Following where Marilyn’s finger pointed, Duniya saw Fariida and Nasiiba lying side by side on the far edge of the pool. Seeing Fariida made Duniya eager to know what the young thing had been through. But would Fariida talk, would she tell her everything? “Can you find your way to them?” asked Marilyn. “Because I’d like to swim a little.” And without further ado, she swam away.

Duniya was wary of stepping out, seized by paranoid speculation that everyone would be staring at her as she walked towards Nasiiba and Fariida. She had just looked in the girls’ direction, wanting to gauge the distance separating them, when she noticed that Nasiiba was smoking a cigarette. This shocked Duniya. But why?

This self-questioning had a positive effect on her own behaviour, suddenly making her feel indifferent, impervious to everything. She no longer cared who saw her over-exposed body. She stepped out of the pool and walked purposefully towards Nasiiba, whose cigarette became the beacon on which to concentrate. No sense of chill ran through any part of her as she walked up the stone steps and out of the pool; and she didn’t swallow back nausea, as she had feared. Duniya reminded herself that theirs was a household where there was a semblance of individual freedom and problem-sharing, where there was no male authority: weren’t freedoms like these to be taken? Mataan had his Waris, Nasiiba her smoking.

When she joined them, Nasiiba said, “Sit or lie down, as you like.” Fariida grinned at Duniya welcomingly.

Shocks come and go, like layers of skin peeling. Duniya could now look at Nasiiba smoking, without the accompanying feeling of violated emotion, pretending not to be bothered by it.

From her vantage point, towering above the two prostrate figures, she decided that Fariida’s choice of colours shared a faint resemblance with salad rinsed in fresh water. She lay down beside them on a towel, facing them both. Duniya said, “What should I say to you, Fariida? Welcome back? I’m glad you’re alive? Or why didn’t you let me know right from the beginning?”

Fariida’s prominent jaws moved, opening wider as she offered Duniya her profile. She looked at Nasiiba, as if for guidance, then said, “We would be telling a different story if I had spoken to you that morning, wouldn’t we?”

“We would indeed,” Duniya agreed.

Nasiiba got up. “I’ll let the two of you talk,” she said, and without waiting for their reaction, moved away, at a fast trot, until she reached the springboard, from which she dived into the pool.

“Where were you all this time?” Duniya asked Fariida.

“I had a small room in the Buur Karoole district,” Fariida said, “less than two kilometres from your place. Nasiiba would cut classes to come and see me. For a long time no one knew where I was, no one, that is, except Nasiiba. It was a healthy pregnancy, physically, and being an athlete helped a great deal. I had no need to consult a doctor. To have blood, urine and similar tests or my temperature taken I contacted a friend via Nasiiba. That morning, however, I was feeling a bit down and had confused the dates and Nasiiba had not come to me.”

“What did you do the morning I caught a glimpse of you?”

“You called and called and caused me worry. So I went off in a waiting taxi, back to where I was staying.”

“I see,” said Duniya.

“But since my blood is the same rare group as Nasiiba’s, you might say I owe my life to her. When I left you at the clinic, I took the taxi straight to a clinic I had been using, and the doctor said to admit me. Delivering a baby in such circumstances is an atrocious shame, but Nasiiba was an angel, donating blood, seeing to it that I was well taken care of. It was she who suggested I ‘abandon’ my baby to her. So what does one say to you, I ask myself? ‘Thank you very much’ to your ‘Welcome back’? Or ‘The experience has been worth it’ to your ‘I’m glad you’re alive’? Or ‘How could I let you know when I didn’t know myself?’ to your ‘Why didn’t you let me know right from the beginning?’ “

“You say you had a taxi waiting for you on a day the city of Mogadiscio had none plying its streets. How come?”

“Please don’t rush the story.”

“I’m sorry” Duniya said.

In Fariida’s look there was pride at having undergone an ordeal and survived it. “I’m the kind of woman whose stomach doesn’t blow up much until about the eighth month,” she said, “but I didn’t want to risk it, I didn’t want Miski to know until I’d had the baby, and maybe not even then. We already had a strained relationship, you see, Miski and I, following the break-up of her engagement to her fiance, for which she wrongly blamed me. That’s why I didn’t let anyone know except Nasiiba, by which time it was too late for me to rid myself of it. Irregular periods play tricks on young women who can’t remember whether or not they have taken their pills. My irregular periods were my principal problem.”

“So what exactly did you do?”

“One morning I packed and went, leaving a note on the desk for Miski to find when she got back from Rome. The brief note just said that I had gone away, but that there was no cause for worry, no one need panic. I’d written similar notes for her before when I left the country, once to Nairobi, another time to Dar es Salaam — on both occasions with Qaasim, who financed our trips. When I became pregnant, I didn’t want him to know. We’d enjoyed our illicit affair, every wondrous moment of it, so what was the point regretting? He might have proposed if he’d known I was carrying his child. But I’d said no when he showed interest in marrying me before there was any evidence that I was with child: no, no, no.”

“What made you decide not to marry Qaasim in the first place?”

“Age difference is a major reason, I suppose. Imagine when he’s turning seventy, I’ll be your age, still young, ready to contract another marriage, fall in love, learn to drive a car, or to swim. No way, I said.”

“Where did it all start?”

“At your place.”

“When?” If Duniya was supposed to feel guilty, she did not. Smiling reminiscently Fariida said, “I came to deliver a parcel to you from your brother in Rome. Nasiiba wasn’t there that day, only you were. Qaasim arrived, we had tea, the three of us. Then he left, only to park within sight of Aw-Cumar’s shop, waiting. I knew he was waiting as only women can know such things, and so I, too, left, rather hastily, refusing to stay until Nasiiba returned home. I was eager for adventure. I’d lost my virginity to a boy my age, and was anxious to experiment with older men just for fun. Qaasim took me home. Miski was away and we were alone the best part of that night. That was how it started.”

“You took no precautions?”

“He did.”

“And so how did it happen?”

“I am to blame.”

“How?”

“Let’s not go into that now.”

“Did you ever tell him you were having his child?”

“Nasiiba did.”

“And what did he say?”

“He would pay for my abortion if I wanted to get rid of it, that he made clear. What was more, if I were willing he’d take me as his wife. I sent him word through Nasiiba that it was no business of his what I did with myself or the foetus. I had made a mistake, I said, and would pay for it.”

“But why?”

“Maybe because I’d begun atoning for the pain I’d caused Miski.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“Little in life makes sense,” said Fariida. “Doesn’t it say in a few Koranic verses that one’s fate is one’s shepherd and one goes where one’s destiny is determined to take one? In other words, I decided I am a given. My destiny has its sequences and logic.” She paused to suppress tears welling in her eyes.

“Come, come,” Duniya said, giving Fariida’s head a pat, “the baby was no inconvenience to us — a pleasure in fact.” She stopped herself just in time from telling her what various people had said about the foundling: how Mire had thought of him as a catalyst; how she and Bosaaso had thought of him as a metaphor. “How did Miski learn of it all?” Duniya asked.

“It was Qaasim who approached her, proposing that he and I marry. That was the first she knew of my pregnancy. And that caused a bit of a stir. There was total panic, and Nasiiba felt compelled to bring Miski to my hiding-place. You wouldn’t believe it, but this occurred a week before you saw me at the clinic. I still have the Number Seventeen token, which I’ll keep as a souvenir, to remember all we’ve gone through.”

“But why didn’t you just come and tell me everything?” “One is never sure what you might do, Duniya,” Fariida said frankly “It was too late for you to do anything, anyway, and since we hadn’t informed you from the start I thought it best to keep you out of it.”

“What do you think I might have done if you had told me?”

Fariida dimmed her bright eyes. “We wouldn’t be sitting here, talking the way we are, if I had.”

They were silent for a few minutes. Then Nasiiba joined them.

The two girls gossiped for a while about some of their friends. It was when Duniya was ready to leave with Bosaaso that Fariida remembered Miski had given her the keys to the city centre flat, which was Duniya’s to move into whenever she pleased.

Bosaaso and Duniya left Nasiiba and Fariida lying beside the pool, in the gathering dusk, talking and smoking together. Duniya was very tired. Swimming had taken a lot of her energy, and listening to Fariida’s story had been demanding, too.

When they were moving and on a stretch of good road without traffic or pot-holes, Bosaaso gave Duniya a newspaper neatly folded, a newspaper which felt unread. “The newspaper you’re holding has a long article by Taariq,” he said. “I thought you might like to see it.”

Duniya gave a start, for the image of the dead foundling came floating up in her memory at the mention of Taariq’s name. Why was she was beginning to associate Taariq with the dead foundling?

“Is the article any good?” she asked Bosaaso.

He drove cautiously because some children were playing football in the middle of the street. He did not speak until they were in front of Duniya’s place, “Yes, I found it rather good,” he replied.

Getting out of the car, she said, “I’m too exhausted to entertain anyone, so do you mind if we meet tomorrow? At noon?”

“Of course not.”

His excessive politeness was getting on her taut nerves, but she was too tired to remark on it. “I hope by then well have found two or three cleaning women to mop, dust and prepare the city flat, whose key I have now, for Abshir to use when he arrives.”

“That’s a superb idea,” Bosaaso said.

She thought better of a rude remark which called at her mind that very instant. She gave him a kiss, saying, “Tomorrow then, noon.”

And for the moment was only too glad to be rid of him.

“Sweet dreams,” he said, driving away.

Mataan and Yarey did not come home until a little after midnight. And Duniya was content to lie in bed, propped up with a number of pillows, reading Taariq’s article. She had energy only for that.

GIVING AND RECEIVING: THE NOTION OF DONATIONS

BY TAARIQ

Giving is a human instinct, perhaps the oldest, if we are to believe the Adam and Eve story of the paradisiacal apple the serpent offers to the woman who in turn shares it with the man. We give hoping to receive something corresponding to what we’ve offered. We give in the hope that our gift will express our affection and compassion towards the recipients. We give, as members of a group, to confirm our loyalty to it. We give to meet the demands of a contract, or the obligations and rights others have on our property. We give and may consider this act as part of our penance. We give in order to feel superior to those whose receiving hands are placed below ours. We give to corrupt. We give to dominate. There are a million reasons why we give, but here I am concerned with only one: European and North American and Japanese governments’ donations of food aid to the starving in Africa, and why these are received.

Last week, the world ran and Africa starved. Last week, millions of people broke Olympic records. A Sudanese runner flew across the globe to light a torch in New York. Last week, millions of cameras clicked, capturing scenes of rejoicing men and women who breasted the finish ribbon — scenes that were the culmination of media events. The sports activities organized to commemorate the day were a round-the-clock affair, keeping busy radio commentators and TV crews in Western Europe, North America, Japan, South-East Asia and India. In the end, the events were reduced to a compilation of statistics; how many people participated, how much money was collected to aid the starving in Africa? Last week, while the non-starving peoples of the world ran, taking part in the self-perpetuating media exercises of TV performances, Africa waited in the wings, out of the camera’s reach, with an empty bowl in hand, seeking alms, hoping that generous donations would come from the governments and peoples of the runners. Empty brass bowls make excellent photographs. Video cameras take shots of them, from every imaginable angle. To starve is to be of media interest these days. Forgive my cynicism, but I believe this to be the truth.

Africa’s famine became a story worthy of newspaper headlines when you could sell pictures of faces empty of everything, save the pains of starvation. Jonathan Dimbleby of BBC TV was the first to use the power of the televised message spelling clearly, in letters huge as the politics of drought, the one and only underlying sub-theme of hunger on a massive scale: powerlessness. Dimbleby produced a sensitive programme on the Ethiopian famine in the early 1970s. In this half-hour documentary, he used alternative shots of starving masses and pictures of the world’s powerful politicians attending the Emperor’s lavish feast at which delicacies like caviar had been served. A few months later, the Emperor was overthrown.

The question is, how come the same story in 1985 and 1986 is used by governments all over the continent in their favour and no heads roll, no despot’s regime is overthrown? Unhelped, with no food aid reaching the country, the Emperor was toppled. Can we conclude that if foreign governments stop aiding the African dictators with food hand-outs, then their people will rise against them?

Famine is a phenomenon the African is familiar with. In Somalia, there are people who bear the names of the years of drought. People adjusted the holes in their belts, but they did not beg. They held their heads high, allowing no one to humiliate them, letting no one know that their hearths had remained unlit the previous night. Those who had the people’s mandate to rule were united in the belief that he begs who has no self-pride, and he works responsibly who intends to be respected. But we know that a great many of the men at the helm of the continent’s power do not have the people’s mandate to be there in the first place, and have no self-pride or foresight. We also know that their incompetent five-year plans cannot be executed without the budget being supplemented from foreign sources. Are we therefore up against the proverbial wisdom that people get the government they deserve, and we deserve beggars to be our leaders?

There is a tradition, in Somalia, of passing round the hat for collections. It is called Qaaraan. When you are in dire need of help, you invite your friends, relatives and in-laws to come to your place or someone else’s, where, as the phrase goes, a mat has been spread. But there are conditions laid down. The need has to be genuine, the person wishing to be helped has to be a respectable member of society, not a loafer, a lazy ne’er-do-well, a debtor or a thief. Here discretion is of the utmost significance. Donors don’t mention the sums they offer, and the recipient doesn’t know who has given what. It is the whole community from which the person receives a presentation and to which he is grateful. It is. not permitted that such a person thereafter applies for more, not soon at any rate. If there is a lesson to be learned from this, it is that emergencies are one-off affairs, not a yearly excuse for asking for more. Now how many years have we been passing round the empty bowl?

Famines awake a people from an economic, social or political lethargy. We’ve seen how the Ethiopian people rid themselves of their Emperor for forty years. Foreign food donations create a buffer zone between corrupt leaderships and the starving masses. Foreign food donations also sabotage the African’s ability to survive with dignity. Moreover, it makes their children feel terribly inferior, discouraging them from eating the emaciated bean sprouts, the undernourished corn-on-the-cob and broken rice. Forgive me for dishing out to you cliches and, if I may beg your indulgence, let me quote a statement made by Hubert Humphrey, who said in 1957, “I’ve heard … that people may become dependent on us for food. I know this is not supposed to be good news. To me that was good news, because before people can do anything, they have got to eat. And if you are looking for a way to get people to lean on you and to be dependent on you, in terms of their co-operation with you, it seems to me that food dependence would be terrific.” Well put, wouldn’t you agree? Now we may continue.

An East African leader, known to be of socialist persuasion, recently granted an interview to a London-based African magazine, in which he said that the developed nations must help Africa. But why must they? What makes him think that the African has a proprietory right over the properties of others? Did the country of which he has been a leader the past quarter of a century donate generously to the starving in Ethiopia or Chad? One could understand if this most respected African statesman made his statement in the context of a familiar or tribal society where obligatory or voluntary exchanges of gifts are part of the code of behaviour. In such a context, the exchange is direct. You give somebody something; a year later, when you are in need, today’s recipient becomes tomorrow’s giver. Does this intellectual statesman foresee the time when Africa will be in a position to donate food to Europe, North America or Japan? Is he aware that he is turning the African into a person forever dependent?

Every gift has a personality — that of its giver. On every sack of rice donated by a foreign government to a starving people in Africa, the characteristics and mentality of the donor, name and country, are stamped on its ribs. A quintal of wheat donated by a charity based in the Bible Belt of the USA tastes different from one grown in and donated by a member of the European Community. You wouldn’t disagree, I hope, that one has, as its basis, the theological notion of charity; the other, the temporal, philosophical economic credo of creating a future generation of potential consumers of this specimen of high quality wheat. I have two problems here.

One. It is my belief that a god-fearing Bible Belter knows that publicized charities won’t wash with God. The only mileage in it is an earthly sense of vainglory. Second. The European Community bureaucrat need not be told that the donated wheat is but a free sample of items that it is hoped will sell very well when today’s starving Africans become tomorrow’s potential buyers. There is enough literature to fill bookcases, surveys written up by scholars, following America’s policy of donating food aid to Europe, Japan, South-East Asia. I suggest that you walk this well-trodden path in the company of Susan George or Teresa Hayter. But let me deal with the mentality of the receiver and his systems of beliefs and what gifts mean to him.

Most Africans are (paying?) members of extended families, these being institutions comparable to trade unions. Often, you find one individual’s fortunes supporting a network of the needs of this large unit. On a psychological level, therefore, we might say that the African is unquestionably accustomed to the exchange of potlachs. Those who have plenty, give; those who have nothing to give, expect to be given to. In urban areas, there are thousands of strong young men and women who receive “unemployment benefit” from a member of their extended family, somebody who has a job. Hence, it follows that when the bread-winner’s earnings do not meet everyone’s needs; when the land isn’t yielding, because insufficient work is being put in to cultivate it; when hard currency-earning cash crops are grown and the returns are paid to service debt; and just when the whole country is preparing to rise in revolt against the neo-colonial corrupt leadership: a ship loaded with charity rice, unasked for, perhaps, docks in the harbour — good quality rice, grown by someone else’s muscles and sweat. You know the result. Famine (my apologies to Bertold Brecht) is a trick up the powerful man’s sleeve; it has nothing to do with the seasonal cycles or shortage of rain.

If I could afford to be cynical, I would say that the African, knowing no better, accepts whatever he is given because it is an insult to refuse what you’re offered. If his cousin or a member of the extended family doesn’t give, God will or somebody else will. God, as we know Him, has been “given” to us, together with all the mythological paraphernalia, genealogical truisms that classify us inferior beings, not to forget the Middle Eastern philosophical maxim that God (in a monotheistic sense) is progress. Yes, the truth is, our Gods and those of our forefathers, we have been told, do not give you anything; and since they have a beginning, they have an end, too.

Somalis are of the opinion that it is in the nature of food to be shared. If you come upon a group of people eating, you are invited to join them. There is, of course, the prophylactic tendency to avoid the wickedness of the envious eye of the hungry, but this isn’t the principal reason why you’re offered to partake of the meal being eaten. Linked to the notion of food is the belief regarding the shortlived nature of all perishables. The streets of Mogadiscio are overcrowded with beggars carrying empty bowls, wandering from door to door, begging to be given the day’s left-overs. Is it possible, I wondered the other day, to equate the donor governments’ food surpluses which are given to starving Africans, to the left-overs we offer to famished beggars? Or am I stretching the point?

When Somalis despair of someone whom they describe as a miser, they often say, “So-and-So doesn’t give you even a glass of water.” So when they hear stories about butter being preserved in icy underground halls, foods kept in temperatures below freezing point, racks and racks of meat shelved, rows and rows of rice and other luxuries kept in a huge cellar colder than the Arctic, it is then that Somalis say, “But these people are mean.” Press them to tell you why they should be given anything, and they take refuge in generalizations. Ask them why Russia doesn’t provide them with food aid, and they become cynical. The only difference between us and Russia, although we eat the same American wheat, is that we pay for it with our begging, and they with their foreign reserves.

Last week the world ran and Africa starved. No doubt, television is a personality creator, and donors have their smiling pictures taken, alternating with scenes of Ethiopian skeletons. For the first time Africa has been given prime time TV” coverage, but alas, Africa is speechless, and hungry. In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the one and only moment the African is given a line to speak, the poor fellow is made to employ an incorrect grammatical structure. That was of prime and all-time literary significance. A hundred years later, in a film called Out of Africa, directed by an American, based on a book by a Danish woman who lived in Africa and maybe loved the part of the continent she lived in but had no love for its people, this film counted among its actors Somalia’s most famous daughter, Iman. Guess what: she has a non-speaking role. Make of all this what you will; but ask yourself, now what? Who gets what, gives what to whom?

I retreat into a skeletal silence: when the world runs and starving Africa starves; when the cameras click and runners catch their breaths, having chested the finish ribbons of a momentary glory. And when the TV-watching public and video-producing crews turn and ask me to say something, I feel shy, I am tongue-tied. Like a child to whom an adult has given a gift, who smiles timidly and takes it, and whose mother says, “Say thank you to Uncle,” I too say, thank you one, thank you all, Uncles Sam, Sung, and Al-Mohamed too.

She put aside the newspaper, delighted that Taariq could still have lucid moments of virtuosity. But why was the article published only now? Did the censors disallow publication when he submitted it, following the week in which the world ran while Africa starved?

Exhausted and yet unable to sleep, she contemplated the world surrounding her with a frown. And the world was a key. By staring at the key to the city flat, the one Fariida had brought from Miski, Duniya had the feeling she was looking at the levers, the carved bends and twists of her own future.

And suddenly, she knew what she was going to do. “Tomorrow evening,” she said, “Duniya will spend the night at Bosaaso’s to make of her body a gift to him. Tomorrow evening.”