Gifts

16

Duniya, in a mood of elation, calls at the city-centre flat where three cleaning women are busy preparing; it is in that exalted state of mind that she suggests she and Bosaaso spend the night at his place.

The scene opens in darkness, then a spotlight is directed on a woman standing in a river. As she readies to swim away, an unknown man is saying to her, “Gum to gum, dust to water, fire to earth, and you are in such a wonderful state of happiness where seven comes before eight, a cot before a baby, the bed before the ring.”

Her splashing arhythmic, the woman swims away, and the spotlight is switched off: end of dream sequence. Soon after a bulb is burning in Duniya’s and Nasiiba’s room.

Immediately after breakfast, Duniya, her children and Bosaaso went to the city flat — and they all liked it. She had arranged for three hospital cleaning women to perform a moonlighting job, to mop, dust, wash the floors and walls. Bosaaso ferried to and fro getting a plumber to fix the dripping taps and toilets that weren’t flushing properly, or a carpenter to repair the creaky garden door that wouldn’t shut, or pick up some US-made chemical with which to unblock the sinks and drains.

It was agreed that Abshir would use the city-centre flat, it being more central, more spacious. For his meals he would come to Duniya’s; alternatively Nasiiba would move in with him to help him cope, cook if need be. Duniya considered renting a car for the period he was in Mogadiscio, so he would be free to go as and when and where he pleased. Mataan was generous in giving up his spring bed, insisting that he didn’t mind sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Nasiiba offered to spend all day in the flat with the three cleaning women, doing as much as them, if not more, her hands and arms dirty to the elbow, her plaited, beaded hair brown with the webbed dust the spiders had spun. Although more of a hindrance than a help, little Yarey washed the midget sink in the kitchen, wasting precious detergent, time and water. Duniya vowed not to take a break until after she had prepared the bedroom, whose french windows overlooked the garden, certain that Abshir would prefer it to the other room facing a hallway. Meanwhile, Bosaaso hired a pick-up truck to bring from Duniya’s place Mataan’s spring bed, a couple of chairs, tables. A little later, Duniya sent him on a simpler errand: to have the new flat’s keys cut.

“Will you be able to stay overnight if need be?” Duniya asked one of the three cleaning women.

“Sure.”

“And no one will worry about you not returning home?”

The second woman said, “When you are our age, Duniya, you’ll discover what it means not to be missed. In any case I live within walking distance from here and can help organize food and mats for my colleagues too.”

“I’ll sleep anywhere, even on the bare floor,” said the third cleaner.

Having put in nine hours’ labour, Duniya and her entourage returned to her old flat, leaving the new one in the trusted hands of the cleaning women. It was late in the afternoon: tea was made and drunk, and Duniya showered, changed into a house garment and rested. Bosaaso went home to shower, then returned to Duniya’s as agreed. He met her, nervous, anxious, but also light-hearted as though his adulthood had provisionally given way to a younger self, brightly glowing in the happy atmosphere their eagerness had brought forth.

When the children’s backs were turned the two of them slipped away noiselessly, like naughty adolescents. She had the car keys in her hand and was saying, “I’ll drive.”

The nine-day-old moon led her towards Bosaaso’s house.

The sky was starry and spacious. The car stalled now and then, but this disturbed neither of them, producing only laughter. Doggedly, Duniya restarted the engine whenever the car stopped, both behaving as if they had all the time in the world to cover the distance separating their respective houses.

But wouldn’t she be missed? he wondered. Or had she told Nasiiba where she would spend the night? But the twins were so excited at the prospect of Uncle Abshir’s visit they might not give their mother’s absence a moment’s thought, he reasoned.

Now Duniya’s feet operated the clutch, brake and accelerator and the car ran smoothly, albeit anxiously, towards Bosaaso’s house, as if relying totally on its homing instinct. Duniya’s eyes grinned with the joy of anticipation. Bosaaso sat back, envying her calm. He kept his hands to himself; she wouldn’t have liked it if he had touched her while she was driving, he knew that.

“I love you,” he said.

Nothing suggested that she had heard his proclamation.

He repeated the words to himself: and then they touched.

The roads were more or less empty of cars, and they were driving through a district in which power had been cut. People, because of this, came out of their houses, poured into the streets where the air was fresher and where there were cage terraces, turning the nuisance of the lack of electricity to their advantage, going for walks by moonlight, or standing, in groups, chatting. At one point, there was a small gathering of men and women engaged in an argument in the centre of a crossroads. With full headlights on, Duniya had come on them without slowing down, causing them to run helter skelter, cursing, speaking all manner of insults, one describing her as a mad woman.

“I’m sorry,” she said, when in a state of mind to speak.

By then, she had eased the vehicle into total submission, and was clearly in a light-hearted euphoria, winged like a griffin. She pressed the accelerator, speeding up more and more. She did this to shorten the distance existing not between her body and Bosaaso’s but between herself and her brother, Abshir. Only hours separated them and she wished to spend these in self-abandonment, in Bosaaso’s house and company. She wanted several questions about Bosaaso out of the way before she embraced Abshir.

To enrich itself, her memory returned to that ambiguous zone between myth and religion, where griffin-like buraaqs rubbed shoulders with jinns eaves-dropping at the gates of heaven; where shooting-stars were said to be aimed at the latter to discourage them; where bored women engage jinns in illicit love affairs; where jinns, out of wickedness, mounted sentry duty at the door to Zubair’s sight.

Tonight, Duniya had a deep-seated wish to give herself to him, a wish that had taken days to mature. She was glad he hadn’t rushed her. Now the timing was right, and its suddenness lent her decision more power, like unexpected thunder in a season of awaited rains. She wanted to know what he was like in bed; if he snored; what were his quirks; was he fussy about which side of the bed he slept on; was he in a foul mood when he woke in the mornings?

From the way he stirred, she sensed he wished to say something. “Yes?”

“We’ll have time to talk,” she heard, and yet he appeared dead from worry, pale almost, the blood drained out of him. She touched his hand which felt cold, lifeless.

“Say it if it can’t wait until we reach your place,” she said.

He hesitated. “It’s just…” but he hadn’t the courage to finish whatever it was he had intended to say.

She slowed down. He would have to give her directions from then on. But he told her to turn left when he meant her to go to the right. She decided he had a terrible sense of direction, which she attributed to his having lived in a sign-posted city where one had maps and didn’t depend on one’s instinctive sense of direction. She didn’t understand what he was talking about, but she let him talk on and on, because it did him good, reducing the tension considerably. But what exactly did he want to say?

A woman who has brought up three children isn’t easily surprised; she can see anxiety on her children’s faces, knows what they want long before they speak. As a nurse, she listened to a great many silly questions coming from otherwise intelligent people who, because they’re unwell, lose the ability to use their heads wisely.

“Do you know how long Abshir is staying in Mogadiscio?” he asked.

“I’ve no idea,” she replied.

He is a worrier, she thought. A heart-eating, self-questioning man, with little confidence in himself. He is possibly the kind of man who gets up at day-break to worry about whether or not he will keep his midday appointments.

She was glad when they got to his gate, in front of which she braked. There were lights on in the upper floor of the house, and she could see a balcony badly in need of repair. Was that the balcony from which Yussur and the baby had dropped to their deaths? Duniya, with the engine still running, came out of the car, saying to him, “You drive it in yourself.”

A night watchman, from the River People, showed her the way with a torch, indicating to her the small side gate by which pedestrians entered Bosaaso’s house. But when he had parked his car in its shelter and joined her, in fact, just as he had taken her hand to lead her inside, there was a power cut whose suddenness made her start. The night watchman’s faint flashlight provided enough light for them to see the steps to the main door.

“I have a generator and enough diesel to run it,” he said.

“If the rest of the district has no light, why should we?”

“Fair enough,” he said.

As she entered the door which he had held open for her, Duniya saw her shadow severing, in two halves, the moonlight looking in the doorway She stepped on the tail of her own shadow, as if it were a doormat on which she was meant to wipe her shoes clean. Walking further in, she sensed that the house had something spiritless about it. She walked straight ahead, but stood out of Bosaaso’s way, imagining that he would want to look for a box of matches or candles or to pull open curtains or windows. An instant later, however, she could hear the french windows being dragged open scratchily, and he was saying, “There is an armchair here. Please come.”

“In a moment,” she said.

“Or would you rather we sit in the dark looking out on the moonlight?”

They met midway and embraced. The night was gauze-thin and she had little difficulty penetrating the greyish membrane with which it was wrapped. The moon guided her towards itself, where it occupied the centre of a clearing, and the clouds had stayed back, like a well-behaved crowd of onlookers, giving space and limelight to the principal actor the occasion had crowned. She loved the silence, loved the half-dark, she loved the two of them on their feet, chest to chest, with neither saying anything. Then she lost sight of the moon. But had it gone? She counted up to thirteen, as though it were a lighthouse whose flashing could be timed. Then the outside world began interfering with their inner quietness and peace.

The night watchman called Bosaaso’s name.

“Shall I answer?” he said, in a whisper.

Letting go of him, she said, “You already have.”

His breath was charged with tension, like a frightened lizard’s throat. Now that they fell apart, each cast a separate shadow, his shorter than hers. He was clearly upset, but didn’t want to shout at the night watchman, poor fellow. He was angry with himself. His voice carried in it a multitude of mixed emotions when he said, “What is it you want?”

The night watchman stood to the side of the door which Bosaaso had opened. Heard but not seen, he delivered his message: “Waaberi, your sister-in-law, has been here a number of times.”

Bosaaso was tempted to correct this fool of a night watchman, by reminding him that Waaberi was his former sister-in-law. But he let that pass, in deference to Duniya.

“What did she want, did she tell you?”

“She only said she needed to see you urgently.”

“Did she say what about?”

“And there was that man with her.”

“Whatman?”

The night watchman had a Baidoan Somali accent and this began to jar on Bosaaso. He might have lost his self-control had not Duniya come and taken his hand, to kiss it.

“Do you know the name of the man who came with Waaberi?” he asked.

“The one with the car shinier than moonlight,” said the night watchman.

Bosaaso described Kaahin.

“That’s him.”

“When did they say they will come back?”

“Some time tonight.”

Bosaaso’s voice, when he next spoke, assumed two tones, belonging to two different modes of his being. The first half of the statement was followed by a pause, long enough for him to return Duniya’s kiss. He said, “If either Waaberi or Kaahin comes here tonight … my instructions are not to allow either to disturb us.”

“What if they ask when they can see you or where?” said the night watchman.

“Tell them I’ll go and see them myself,” Bosaaso said.

When the door closed and they were in the dark, they listened to the receding footsteps of the night watchman.

She said, “You are so impeccably polite, it puts me to shame, when I think of my rages, fights and tempers. Are we attracted to each other because we’re so different?”

“We have many things in common,” he said.

“Of course we do,” she said, “but it wouldn’t upset me at all if you showed your anger now and then.”

Without saying any more, they walked together, hand in hand, towards the french windows.

“You have a beastly temper, you know that?” he said.

“And your politeness is not so much disarming as challenging,” she said, self-censoriously As they walked on, their hip-bones knocked against each other, like a couple dancing the bump.

Finally, they stopped. There was only one armchair. When sitting in it, Duniya’s fingers touched something hard, which she worked out to be a pair of binoculars. Since her sense of direction was excellent, it didn’t take her long to figure out that the chair was facing west. Did this mean that Bosaaso was a bird watcher? She didn’t think he was a voyeur; besides, who was there to pry on?

“I’m a bird watcher,” he volunteered without her asking him.

Then he kissed her. It was so powerful and so sudden that, in an attempt not to lose her balance, Duniya held on to his sleeve.

He said, when he could, before she had the chance to speak, “I love you.”

She took his hand in both hers and kissed it lightly.

Because she did not say anything, they kissed, this time briefly.

“It would upset me if anything I did or said upset you,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

He sat beside her in the armchair, hoping she could say, “I love you,” or something as pleasant.

She said, “Taariq used to say that I’m like most men, in that details bore me. He would argue that it’s the general drift of things that fascinate my wild nature, my temperamental mind.”

She pushed aside the book that had been in the armchair. He became curious, wondering what he had been reading the last time he sat there, probably one sleepless dawn. He knew from the feel of it that it was Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov.

“I’m a details person, all right; I attend to them rigorously,” he said.

“It’s the details of how a person smiles, their nervous tics, how they sleep, where they fall asleep, which side of the bed they prefer: these are the details that interest me,” Duniya replied.

He was restless, like a man on unsafe ground. “It depends what you mean, knowing a person,” he said.

“Where is the easiest bathroom to get to in the dark?” she asked.

“There’s one on the ground floor. Shall I take you there?”

Then he tickled her. She laughed. And laughing, she got to her feet. She thought he was teasing her like a cat that, once hurt by a bigger dog, falls back on its feline alertness, plays with the canine aggressive instinct, holding back a little. His seductive fingers moved up and down her spine, fingers that were ticklishly open like a cat’s playful but harmless claws. Suddenly, two of his fingers closed in on the clip of her brassiere and, before she could remember the Akan word for “breasts,” the support was gone and they were throbbing with the warmth of excitement. They kissed, he breathed heavily, his nostrils whistling, like a tyre losing air. She didn’t say, “Don’t rush me,” but, “Where is the bathroom, the one on the ground floor?”

The moon entered, shining their way, showing them where to go. The top landing was awash with moonlight. There were three rooms on this floor. He took the right turning and she followed him. He opened a window. More brightness.

Then she said, “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Bosaaso approached Duniya’s body as if it were a door whose combination locks required the performance of a certain number of feats, before being allowed in. He might have been a lowly-bom Arabian Nights prince making good. The stakes were too high for him not to perform well. Only when he proved himself to be a charmer, did she let him in.

And then the doors of her body opened wider, and she lay on top of him, the mistress conducting the speed and flow of the river of their common love. Earlier, he had wanted to know if she had taken the necessary precautions. She had said, “Of course, I have,” making it plain that she wanted no more children, thank you.

He followed the rhythmic dictates of her orchestrated movements, concentrating on the dents on her body, which were like those on stone steps leading to a frequently used door. Her body felt a lot younger than his own, and was undeniably more athletic. For instance, she could sit in a half crouching position for as long as love-making demanded, whereas his back ached.

Loving him was divine. That was clear.

They altered positions. He was on top now, but still thinking, engaging in mental activity because he didn’t want to come until much, much later.

“Where are you?” she teased.

He hesitated, not getting her meaning. They were still in the dark, and they were seeing each other’s body not by feel alone but by the moon shining in as well. He said, “I am in tenth heaven.”

“Where the jinns are?” she asked.

“Eaves-dropping.”

“Then I am the shooting-star. Watch me come, hold me.”

He held on to her as she flew away, by-passing all known and unknown planets of the celestial system of joy, light as that proverbial prophet’s chariot, the prophet whom some call Ilyaas, some Elijah, some Idris, and whom others describe as descending from Haruun, the brother of Moses; this most revered miracle-maker of a prophet, whom Muslims believe to be Khadr.

“Shall we?” she was saying.

And her body opened wider, and there were many more palaces in it, and Bosaaso realized he owned more keys than had been revealed to him. They swapped positions, but without disengaging, locked to each other by the act of their union. He was enjoying himself. That much was obvious to her.

It was her turn to entertain the thoughts visiting her: she thought of bodies, as he took over the responsibility of conducting the orchestra of their love-making. She felt the marks his trouser belt had left round his waist, body marks that were as prominent as a woman’s stretch marks following the delivery of a number of children. He had far too many bums and scars, even for a Somali. Had his mother cauterized every inexplicable complaint, thinking only that curative surgery made any sense?

She went on thinking that the athletics of love is a great sport, if both parties are, keen on prolonging it, and are content to live wholly in the present, in the very moment in which everything is taking place. Then love is divine.

She felt embarrassed, because she had been thinking about sin at the very moment he spoke the words “I love you.” Love is too pedestrian a notion to associate with Allah; he may be merciful, compassionate; human deeds may be worthy of his rage; but he doesn’t love.

“You know what I am going to do after I’ve sold it?”

She grinned. “But why sell it in the first place?”

“Listen to me, please.”

“Can we go to sleep?” she said. “Tomorrow is a long day: Abshir is coming and we have to go to the flat to prepare it for his arrival.”

“I’m too stirred up to fall asleep.”

He looked miserable. It would do no good to tell him to cheer up. He was as highly strung as her, but she had the self-control to contain her tension. She was a woman who knew how to accommodate all life’s contradictions without going insane. “Come,” she said. “Come and lie beside me.”

She stretched out her arm so he could use it as a pillow. She smiled, a smile belt-thin. She listened to him calling her name again and again as though it were the morning’s sacred devotions. “Tell me about Zawadi,” she said.

“What would you like to know?”

“What she’s like.”

“She’s a lovely person.”

“I didn’t think you would have much to do with anyone who wasn’t good at heart,” she said. “Give me a physical description of her.”

“Do you want me to show you photographs of her?” he asked.

She motioned to him to lie where he had lain before. “I don’t trust cameras as much as I trust your emotive description of her. After all, a person is not only a body, which is what photographs show.”

“That’s true,” he agreed.

She encouraged him. “How would you describe her to someone who has never met her?”

“It’s her eyes,” he said, speaking as if under hypnosis.

“What about them?”

“They are almost green.”

“Almost?”

“Like a ginger cat’s, each of Zawadi’s eyes has a slightly different tint, the left a darker green, the right one almost blue. But you have to get close enough to them to notice.”

“And neither eye is artificial?”

“No.”

“What’re her parents’ nationalities?” she asked.

“Both her parents were Afro-American.”

“But somewhere along the line, in her genes, perhaps, there is an explanation,” she said, feeling he was about to doze off. “In a place like the US, where almost everybody comes from somewhere else, there’s bound to be an explanation.”

His eyes were closed, his breathing even like a sleeper’s.

“Would her photographs, the ones you wanted me to see, have shown these differences in the colouring of her eyes?”

There was no answer. He was asleep.

“What do you reckon her reaction will be if she hears you and I are married? Do you think that will upset her? I mean, is she the kind of person who’s likely to send us a telegram of congratulations even if she were?”

When there was no reply, she disengaged her body from his. Then something snapped in her head, like a blind snapping open in a room in which dawn, like an egg, broke bright and light-hearted.

She was sad he wasn’t awake to hear the decision she had reached.

17

In which Duniya wakes up in Bosaaso’s house. Later Waaberi, his late wife’s younger sister, calls; so do Hibo and Kaahin.

A young woman intimate enough with Duniya speaks in the dream of untapped wealth to be found at the bottom of a narrow-mouthed well. Would Duniya like to jump in and appropriate it? She thinks for a long while, eventually giving in, plunging head first, brave, adventurous, untouched by fear of death or drowning. Awaiting her, Duniya finds a well-groomed orchard and at its centre a spring.

Somewhere in the house a radio was giving the morning news bulletin, in English. A raft of strange sounds reached Duniya’s drowsy sense, in weird sequences. Some of the noises were coming from the kitchen where she assumed Bosaaso was preparing breakfast; some came from the eaves, others from within her own head. She was too exhausted to determine what mysterious waves had washed her ashore, depositing her on such an alien beach. Before taking stock of the externals surrounding her, she listened to the 7 o’clock news:

It has been announced at a press conference that the US government is donating to Somalia 30 million dollars’ worth of aid for three programmes. The first is under the heading The Northwestern Region Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Programme and to this the sum of $12 million has been allocated; the second (to which about $5.5 million has been allocated) is to help ameliorate the overall condition of people from the region which has suffered a civil war; while the third programme comprises reconstruction of all the infrastructure that the war in the area has destroyed.

Thinking: this was no civil war, there was a massacre in the Northern Region of innocent civilians, a will-o’-the-wisp drone deafened Duniya with the suddenness of a shock It was not so much a din of noises, more the loudness of ugly colours. The colours of the curtains in the room in which she woke, in which she and Bosaaso had made love, clashed with its wall, those of the walls with the ceiling, and the ceiling’s with the doors and window Perhaps it was unfair to pass judgement on other people’s taste. In any case, which of the two was responsible: Bosaaso or Yussur? Upon whom would she lay the full blame? And what were the reasons for making these choices? Being of a generous turn of mind, she decided that maybe a number of people’s tastes had been accommodated here. But how could he wake in a room like this every morning? The curtain material had a plastic look and feel; the wallpaper was fresh green, bright yellow, flowery, showy. Was it because Bosaaso was a man and so had the enormous capacity to postpone dealing with a domestic problem until some woman came in to tackle it?

It was just as well the lights were off the night before. Would she have stayed, made love and slept here if she had seen all this ugliness? Not likely, although she might have suggested they go to the city flat. Looking up now, she saw a spider spinning the fibre of its own fable. She remembered the warmth of Bosaaso’s body, exuding heat much like a radiator.

He slept on his back, right hand placed on his left, both hands resting on his breast, as if performing devout prayers. A smile embellished his lips, his breathing inaudible, his whole body straight, not a bend anywhere. In the body-politic of sleep, he was a handsome man to watch.

Taariq, Duniya reminded herself, used to take up more than his fair share of the bed, and Zubair fell asleep in a tortured posture, like a child whom drowsiness called on in the middle of a convulsive cry. Mataan slept with his mouth half open; wickedly Nasiiba had once splashed a couple of drops of water into it. Could the poor girl have known that in some areas of the Middle East one poured cold water into people’s mouths when they died in the belief that this would facilitate their passage to heaven? On the other hand, asleep, Nasiiba’s right hand remained half closed in the attitude of someone awaiting something to hold, whereas the fingers of her left hand would be doubled into a fist as if clutching a childhood treasure, a fist compact as a clove of garlic. Yarey would shed all her clothing when asleep, her legs open in a posture Nasiiba would describe as rebellious, not obscene.

She heard quiet footsteps on the stone stairs. Then Bosaaso’s head appeared through the door.

“Good morning,” he said, his face expanding with a new smile.

“Good morning.”

“Did you sleep well?” he asked, his hands resting on her belly as his whole body prostrated with the pleasure of giving her a kiss. “And did you dream sweet dreams?”

“I was too exhausted,” she lied.

He sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand in his. “I’ve made an assortment of breakfasts, not knowing what you might like. I realized that it’s our first morning together.”

“It is,” she said.

His words were like fresh-cut flowers. He had showered and shaved. His teeth looked whiter than ever as he said, “Would you like me to bring your breakfast up here or would you prefer to come down and have it with me?”

“What’s the time?” she said.

“It’s almost eight.”

The world of sleep engulfed her like a fog. “I’d like to shower first,” she said.

He got up to bring her a towel, opening the cupboard near the window. Then she saw the contrast between his plainness and humble cast of mind and the plastic discomfiture of the furnishings of the room. It was a comfort to let her gaze dwell on him. He was wearing locally-made khaki trousers, a collarless shirt of maraykaan-cotton and sandals. He walked back to her with the deference of a waiter.

“If you like, I can go out while you’re in the shower, call at the flat in the city centre, collect the key from the cleaning women, pay them off, run other errands like telegraphing New York, if it’s possible, and then come back?” he said.

All the other errands struck her as very pedestrian, and it didn’t matter to her whether they were done by him or someone else. “Why telegraph New York?” She actually wanted to ask, “Telegraph whom in New York?” and suspected she knew the answer.

He was not good at lying, “I’ve just remembered it’s a friend’s birthday,” he said, but his eyes were shifty evasive.

“Why not postpone going out until we’ve had breakfast?” she said.

“Very well.”

With the towel dragging behind her, and not a stitch on, she walked past him on her way to the shower. Was she being provocative or just deliberately breaking the Islamic concept of cawra, whose primary function is to regulate female-induced chaos, imposing a taboo of ethics on the woman’s body? “See you downstairs,” she said.

Half an hour later, she joined him downstairs.

“Tea? Or would you prefer coffee?” he asked.

“Tea, please.”

He poured her tea into a china cup.

“How much sugar?”

“Two and a half spoons, please.”

Duniya now sensed Yussur’s presence more, given that she had died a tragic death. She wondered if the woman’s comb lent to her by Bosaaso had been Yussur’s and whether she had been disrespectful to Yussur’s memory by refusing to be shown round, shown the balcony from which her predecessor fell to her death. But he was selling the house, anyway, wasn’t he? People would suspect it was she who had encouraged him to sell it in an effort to start their life afresh, with no sad memories linking them to Yussur.

“How’s your omelette?” he asked.

He was a worrier, she decided.

“I can give you something else if you don’t like it.”

“It’s excellent, thanks,” she said.

He felt she wasn’t in a mood to talk.

“Could I have a little more sugar, please? For some reason I have a terribly sweet tooth today.”

“You don’t mind talking at breakfast, do you? Or do you prefer silence?”

She smiled. “I don’t mind either way, really. I’m just thinking.”

She looked about as they ate, asking herself if the kitchen they were in was wider than the main bedroom in which they had slept. To her the kitchen felt more spacious, and handsomely done up, with tiled walls, two ovens, one run on gas, the other on electricity, two refrigerators and a deep-freeze. Duniya guessed that the sun came in during the day crouching at one’s feet, which it tickled, like a favourite pet. At night, the moon shone in, preceded by particles of light, bright and shiny as gold. When the city power returned, the kitchen was the place in which light first came back. Such was the esteemed position a kitchen held in Bosaaso’s thoughts. It seemed to her that he had chosen its decor, leaving Yussur to do what she pleased with the rest of the house. Hence the ugly colours! Bedroom, curtains and all.

“May I share your worries, Duniya?” he said.

It occurred to her she was no longer comfortable with the names each had for the other. She wasn’t happy calling him Bosaaso, and Maxmoud lay heavy on her tongue, like yoghurt that has gone bad. She preferred that he choose his own abbreviation of her name. She thought all this as she chewed and then swallowed what she had in her mouth. “No worries to share, thank you,” she replied.

“What then?”

“I was just thinking about space and kitchens.” He appeared interested; she a little startled, because she didn’t know how Taariq’s favourite concept “space” slipped in. Cautious, she said, “About kitchens, let’s say.”

“I’ve chosen and seen to everything here, including the decor,” he said with pride.

“Why?”

He placed his knife and fork in the shape of a cross, making her think of the two pieces of straw Somalis lay across a milk-vessel, hoping this would discourage jinns from consuming it, or poisoning it for human consumption. He said, “In my mind kitchens are associated with my mother, not in any pejorative sense, but because in a world in which derogatory terms like Nigger, Woman and Native have become badges of honour, I believe that a woman like my mother afforded me the opportunity to take an appreciative look at the world. On returning home I thought, what better way to commemorate her than build a mausoleum of a kitchen in tribute to her? It was also with this in mind that I paid another tribute to my mother’s side of the family — Axmad, the taxi driver and the other cousins in the commune belong to my spindle side of the family, not my father’s. But this is neither here, nor there.”

“Surely, you didn’t grow up in a setting where space in the home is divided up into living, sleeping, eating and cooking spaces? So how can you think of a kitchen as a mausoleum?”

After a long while he said, “I would agree with you that men have assigned to themselves all the sacred, powerful spaces, forbidding women from being visible or present in such places as mosques or at meetings of a council of men reaching decisions which affect the whole community, including women.”

Duniya, agreeing, nodded her head.

“I also agree with you,” he said, following a thoughtful pause, “that the spaces allotted to women belong to the grey areas of beds, food and the rearing of children.”

Then the bell in the kitchen rang, just when they resumed eating their breakfast in reflective quietness. Bosaaso started. When it rang for the second time, he looked at Duniya for guidance. And when it rang for the third time, he looked up at the bell as if it were a video contraption that would show him on a ten-millimetre screen who wanted to enter.

There was anger in his eyes. But Duniya hoped he could decide whether to answer the bell or no without involving her in his affairs. Who could tell who it might be? Waaberi? Mire? Kaahin? One of Bosaaso’s numerous cousins? Or Nasiiba with an urgent message to surprise Duniya?

His mouth was twisted in a grimace.

“I hope that’s Waaberi,” he said, in the tone of a man itching for a fight.

They waited for the fourth ring of the bell.

“Did you hear people calling out your name last night?” she asked.

“I’m a heavy sleeper,” he reminded her.

The bell rang for the fourth time. He got up, a man quick to test his own strength against anyone. Leaving in haste, he dropped his napkin on the floor and Duniya bent down to pick it up.

She returned to her omelette and tea, in the quiet comfortable thought that she hadn’t pressed him either way. His life was his business and he could do what he pleased with it.

She heard the outside gate creak open and then heard it shut, admitting a woman whose thin voice was explaining to Bosaaso that she had come several times before, but had not found him in. “Where have you been all this time? I even went to that woman’s place this mornings, looking for you,” she said.

Bosaaso, voice neutral, said, “Why don’t you come inside?”

I am “that woman,” thought Duniya, smiling.

Bosaaso preceded Waaberi into the kitchen. Duniya sized the woman up as she came in: small, large-mouthed and large-hipped, heavily made up and wearing lipstick, hair singed, dress expensive and belonging to the season’s fashion, with a zip in front, and showing enough of her enormous breasts, like a film preview, dark birthmark in the valley and all, bare arms, a bushy armpit, a belt with a pendant, a necklace of amber beads and bracelets for her wrists and anklets as well. Waaberi was so engrossed with thoughts about Bosaaso that she didn’t see Duniya who might have been part of the kitchen’s furniture. Then, pointing to Duniya, he said, “You know each other, don’t you?”

Not a sound from Waaberi. Only eyes filled with contempt. When next she had an interpretable expression, Duniya thought she might be considering the possibility of turning back whence she had come. But she struggled like a huntswoman caught in the trap she had set.

He offered her a seat, but Waaberi wouldn’t take it. “Would you like to have breakfast with us?” he asked.

“No, thank you,” she said with a touch of nervousness.

Majestically calm, Bosaaso had his hands resting on his hips like a PE instructor watching his trainees rehearse a sequence of exercises, an instructor pleased with the results. “If you’re not sitting down with us and you don’t want to have a cup of tea or a glass of water, is there anything we can do for you?” he said to Waaberi.

Speaking with difficulty, she said, “I’ve come to see you, yes.”

“Why have you come to see me?” And he looked at Duniya, to see what her reaction to the goings-on might be. Hand under chin. None. “I haven’t much time. So speak up please,” he said.

Waaberi almost whispered, “May I speak to you privately?”

“No, you may not.”

“It won’t take more than a minute,” she promised.

“I haven’t a minute to spare. Besides Duniya is no stranger, and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t discuss in front of her.”

Duniya thought Bosaaso might have been a drama student showing to his teacher what he could do.

Waaberi said, “My mother has been unwell.”

“Yes?” said Bosaaso and waited.

“And we’ve just received our electricity, water and other bills, all together.”

“Why bring the bills to me? Or inform me that your mother has been unwell?”

“Because you used to give us a hand in settling some of the bills.”

“Did I only give you a hand or did I settle them all, every cent of your bills?”

Waaberi looked at Duniya for the first time. Then to Bosaaso: “You used to settle them all I am sorry,” and her head bowed, of its own accord. “You’ve always been generous.”

“Do you recall my words when I last called on your mother,” he said, “three days ago, as recently as that?”

She spoke after a pause and with difficulty. “You described yourself as an exploited man, who was being socially blackmailed into giving what he didn’t wish to give any more; you asked us to stop presenting you with our bills.”

“What else did I ask of you? You in particular?”.

She looked too embarrassed to continue. “Go on,” Bosaaso urged her.

“You inquired about how much my jewellery cost, how much the dress and shoes I had on cost, and all my other expensive habits, reminding us that although you worked hard for your money, you couldn’t afford the clothes I wore, and even if you could, you wouldn’t buy them, but would use what you had wisely, care less about external appearances, and not beg.”

“What else did I suggest?” he said.

“That I sell the jewellery to pay the bills.”

“Now whose were they in the first place?”

“Yussur’s.”

“Who was?”

“Your former wife.”

“Did she give them to you, all of the pieces?”

“I borrowed some, and she gave me some.”

“And for how long have I been supporting you and your mother and your expensive tastes after Yussur’s death?”

“One and a half years.”

As though he were counsel for the prosecution rounding up his cross-examination, “Could you remind me when this conversation took place, Waaberi? Do you remember?”

“Three days ago.”

Duniya sensed that she almost added “Sir” to her last response.

Bosaaso sat down. He might have been a jubilant barrister celebrating the end of a successful but difficult case. Anyone might have thought him incapable of such a cruel confrontation.

There was silence. Waaberi looked at Duniya. Was Waaberi appealing to her to intervene? It seemed as if they had been joined by a fourth person. Tension was the fourth person in the kitchen, omnipresent, allowing no one to sit still. This wasn’t a story of equals having a show-down, thought Duniya; not a Duniya confronting the cruelty of a half-brother; or a Yussur having an all-out fight with her mother. This was more like a donor European or American government having a “frank talk” (the all-purpose phrase which would appear in the official communique) with an African country’s representatives, in which the latter were told that they were being immodest in the number of Mercedes and similar extravagances and in the show-pieces they displayed to the rest of the world.

“And you won’t give us anything?” Waaberi said. “Not even this last time?”

“Give your mother my best wishes, that’s all.”

Leaving, Waaberi left behind a tension which strangled Duniya and Bosaaso, preventing them from speaking, even after the outside gate had been shut.

Then, after a long silence, he said, “It’s getting late.”

Absent-mindedly, Duniya asked, “Late for what?”

“I must go and collect the keys from the cleaning women, call at my cousin’s commune and arrange that Axmad joins us in his taxi this afternoon to go to the airport.” He paused. He was sure he had forgotten something.

She didn’t say anything.

“Are you coming or staying?”

She thought that he had his tension to keep him company; so she said, “I’ll wait for you here, do the washing-up and all that. But could you call at my place on your way back? Just to find out how things are?”

Kissing her lightly, he said, “Ciao.”

“Ciao!”

Duniya turned a question over and over in her mind, faster and faster, until the words comprising the question ran into each other. Bosaaso had been gone almost half an hour, by which time she had done the dishes. Then the bell in the kitchen rang.

She went to open the door. She was surprised to be greeted by Hibo and Kaahin.

Duniya invited them to come in and walked away, hoping one of them would push the gate shut and then both would follow her. When she didn’t hear their footsteps, Duniya turned. Curiously, they were talking in whispers, arguing about something. Now she might not have invited Kaahin into her house, but this wasn’t hers, and from what she knew of Kaahin’s and Bosaaso’s relationship, he was welcome in his friend’s house. But now she hesitated and was unable to decide what to do. Were Kaahin and Hibo having a very quiet affair and had they come here, assuming to find only Bosaaso who in any case had known of their liaison? She became irritable. “What’s all this? Why won’t you come in?” she said to them.

Hibo’s eyes moved like a scatter of frightened ants. But Kaahin did not display any nervousness, no deference.

Looking from one to the other, she said, “If you people aren’t coming in, I am going inside to make myself a cup of something and sit in the living-room.”

Unsmiling, Hibo said to Kaahin, “I’ll go in with Duniya, but you sit and wait in the car.”

Duniya knew it wasn’t her business to interfere, but said, maybe out of a desire to avoid misunderstanding, “Come inside, Kaahin.”

He looked like a man who had been dispossessed of all he owned. Duniya thought that Kaahin shared a meagre resemblance with Mataan, in that he too appeared to bloom best when treated like a son. She wondered if this had been the way Zawadi had always treated him, like a son, although he wasn’t her junior in years. And his mouth opened just like Mataan’s and wouldn’t shut; his beady eyes had a glint in them, reflective as silver, when the sun shone on them. “I don’t mind if I wait outside in the car, really,” he said.

“Come, let’s all go inside,” Duniya said to Hibo.

“But I’ve come to talk to you.”

“Let’s go inside, all three of us,” insisted Duniya.

She walked away and was relieved to hear the outside gate bang shut and two sets of footsteps following her. If nothing had been going on between them, what were they saying to each other all the time?

When they were in the kitchen, Duniya said, “Bosaaso isn’t here. So what can I offer you? Tea? Coffee?”

Kaahin said, “We met him in town, running errands. It was he who told us you were here. In fact, I was taking Hibo to your place.” He wore a charming smile.

Duniya decided not to mention that Waaberi had come to see Bosaaso on her own and had not received a warm welcome.

“What’s the matter with you? You look like a suttee who’s come to take her leave of the world she loves,” she said to Hibo, sitting in her chair wrapped in rags of sadness.

Hibo didn’t ask who or what a suttee was, but Kaahin did.

Duniya remembered the explanation Nasiiba had given her, which she repeated, looking not at Kaahin whose question she was answering, but at Hibo who chose to remain silent. “Suttee is a Hindu custom in which a widow immolates herself on her husband’s pyre.”

This made Kaahin so unbearably nervous that he got up as if his chair had instantly turned into an electric one. He said, “I really must go, to let the two of you talk. Thank you, Duniya. Good luck, Hibo,” and dashed out of the kitchen door, banging into it. Even this didn’t stop him. For he shook his head in amazement, grinned and went out as fast as his legs would take him. Soon after, all noises ceased. “What’s ailing you?” Duniya asked Hibo.

Emotionless, Hibo said, “I think I’ve killed Gallayr, my husband.”

“You think you’ve killed him?”

“Yes,” said Hibo, her voice empty of sadness.

“Where’s his body?”

“At home.”

Duniya remembered the detective novels she had read and said, “Is he buried under a pile of earth with bushes hiding the mound or is his corpse in the freezer, awaiting a mortician’s arrival, soon to be followed by an inspector with an unlit pipe?”

Hibo didn’t appreciate Duniya’s humour. She said flatly, “When I left him he was on our bed, grovelling with pain, his face pale and swollen, his eyes bloodshot and all the veins visible.”

“Where did you hide the knife?” asked Duniya.

“I didn’t use a knife.”

“And where are your children?”

“They spent the night at a relative’s.”

Duniya drew comfort from the news that she wasn’t the only one who had spent the night out of her usual bed. For all anyone knew, Hibo had spent it in Kaahin’s place, and was carrying her make-up kit in her handbag that she clutched so tightly during her visit.

“So this was premeditated murder, cold and calculated?” said Duniya.

Not a muscle of Hibo’s moved. “Yes,” she said.

“Where did you throw the gun? Or was this what you and Kaahin were arguing about in whispers by the entrance?” Duniya asked.

“I didn’t use a gun.”

“If you didn’t a knife or a gun, what did you use — poison?”

Hibo nodded, and for the first time since they started talking about all this, she winced. But she suppressed her tears. Her husband, Gallayr, had done something for which he had to be punished, and she did just that. There was no need to shed a tear.

“Don’t you want me to tell you why?” asked Hibo.

“He’s given you gonorrhoea and you killed him by poisoning his food,” Duniya said. Hibo had said that she would either kill or commit suicide if her husband gave her gonorrhoea; she had said so on the day an out-patient confessed her own husband had given her the disease. It was a bore to be as predictable as Hibo, Duniya decided.

Hibo then burst into a tiresome explosion of tears and emotions, but there was something shallow, something pretentious, about her weeping. Given a few seconds, Duniya was certain all this crying would peter out like a river ending in a desert.

Hibo was quiet now and asking Duniya, “What would you do if you were in my place?”

Duniya found it difficult to imagine standing in Hibo’s shoes, but she was a very bright woman and so she said, “If I were you, Hibo, I would go home, and give myself a single effective injection of 2.4 or 4.8 mega units of procaine penicillin.”

“And what would you do about him?”

Duniya said to herself that when husbands are reduced to “him” and wives to “her,” then it is high time the marriage is dissolved, or an illicit affair considered. Being a woman of northerly honour and from Burco where such women are still raised, Hibo contemplated murder. Duniya said, “It depends if he is dead or still alive and breathing.”

“What do you mean?”

Hibo was formidably calm for someone who had poisoned her husband’s food, and Duniya wondered if it was some kind of joke? But she said, “If he is dead, then you must live with your secret for the rest of your days, telling no one what you’ve done.”

“Or perform a suttee, is that what you said that Hindu custom is called?”

Duniya marvelled at her own calm; marvelled at the fact that she was behaving as though she knocked off a husband every April Fool’s Day, as though it were an annual affair for her. It was so incredible she wished Nasiiba were here, probably the one person who might appreciate such macabre anecdotes.

“Performing suttee is too neat. People here in Somalia have not that subtle an understanding of your kind of motive or death, and we wouldn’t wish to waste it on them.”

Hibo pleaded. “What do I do if he isn’t dead?”

“Take him to the hospital and let the doctors decide what chemical antidotes he should be given by telling them what you’ve put in his food,” Duniya advised.

“The man deserves to be dead,” Hibo said.

“So why ask my opinion if you are already decided?”

“I am his very respectable wife, not some street woman,” Hibo said, “to whom he may give gonorrhoea and get away unpunished.”

“Let’s not get carried away. Forget about all this rhetoric of northern honour and southern dishonour. Gallayr has infected you with poison and by putting poison in his food, you’ve poisoned him too.” Duniya helped Hibo to her feet. “There’s no time to waste. Go home and take him to the hospital.”

She then escorted her to the gate. There were tears in Hibo’s voice as she said, “You’re a very strong woman and I envy you.”

Then Hibo’s tongue, thick as a slice of gorgonzola, lay inert in her mouth. Duniya wished her good luck, and they hugged.

Outside they saw Kaahin’s car, parked just outside the gate, and Bosaaso was there talking to him. A little later, Duniya and Bosaaso left in great haste for Duniya’s place.

The children’s chatter stopped when Bosaaso and Duniya walked in. When the ability to speak or to pick up a broom or mop returned, the youngsters went back to work Bosaaso was treated uniformly by all three as though he were an elder brother. Marilyn and Fariida were there as well, but they were too formal with him for his liking.

Duniya and Bosaaso were offered chairs and asked to relax, as though they had come from a long, physically exhausting journey.

Nasiiba came to report that the city flat had been prepared, or at least Uncle Abshir’s room had been readied for use tonight. “And we’re getting a bouquet of flowers,” she added.

Duniya sat up. “A what?”

“A bouquet of flowers and the whole works.”

“Whose idea is this?” Bosaaso said.

“I’ll dress in white, Duniya, gloves and all,” Yarey volunteered.

“But whose idea has this been?”

“Mine,” said Nasiiba.

“We’re welcoming him as though he were a visiting head of state,” Yarey continued, repeating something Nasiiba had told her. “You know, like when a head of another country visits Somalia, a young girl is dressed in white and she gives him a bouquet of flowers. We see that on TV a lot.”

There was energy to Duniya’s decision not to argue out the point with either Nasiiba or Yarey, which was why she encouraged them in a gentle way to get back to what they were doing.

“Of course,” said Bosaaso, “the poor things don’t seem to realize not only that this is a neo-colonial tradition, inherited, along with the idea of flags, a state capital and such paraphernalia, but also that embed-ded in it is a very male notion in which an innocent young virgin dressed in white is offered to a visiting man who happens to be a head of another state. I needn’t remind you that in our own tradition a man whose honour is wounded is often rewarded with a maiden as part of the compensation given him. And when male friends visit their own kind in another town, the host provides his guest with a woman to entertain him.”

“Maybe you should tell them,” said Duniya.

“It would probably spoil their fun,” said Bosaaso.

“That’s possible,” Duniya agreed.

They both fell silent and solemn, like people entering a place of worship. Both were thinking about Abshir and each was looking forward to being reunited with him. Separated by their thoughts, each held on to a pleasant memory, a keep-sake of tenderness from the night before. For her part, she was proud that she hadn’t told him whether she would marry him or not; for his, he took pride in the fact that he wasn’t insisting she tell him her decision.

Welcome, Abshir, my darling brother, Duniya said to herself.

18

In which Duniya, together with her children, Bosaaso and friends drive in a convoy to welcome Abshir at the airport. The day’s party continues late into the night.

Bosaaso’s car was at the head of a convoy of three cars, and Duniya was his only passenger. Following, in a taxi driven by his cousin Axmad, were Yarey, Mataan, Fariida and Marilyn. The third vehicle had Qaasim at the wheel, Taariq in the front, and just to be different from the others, Nasiiba, who sat in the back. Axmad had the taxi-driver’s ignominious habit of pressing the horn non-stop, which made some passers-by take interest in the convoy. When the traffic slowed down, and the horn kept on sounding, a woman ventured to suggest that a marriage was taking place. This produced curiosity in a number of by-standers and the word “wedding” occurred in the conversation of those standing on either side of the road. The Chinese whispers finally reached Duniya’s and Bosaaso’s ears. Then a woman ululated, and another mentioned Duniya’s and Bosaaso’s names.

Duniya had on a mischievous smile. Bosaaso, however, sat rigidly, his back stiff as an elephant’s tail, his eyes looking concentratedly ahead of himself, as though he were driving through patches of fog. “Shall we all go out for a meal tonight, Duniya?” he said.

“Provided you are my guests,” she said.

“And how many are we?”

“Only family,” she said.

“Let’s include Mire, shall we?”

“Yes, let’s,” she consented gladly.

“Will Fariida and Marilyn join us as well?”

“I said, only family Not friends,” Duniya reminded him.

The list of names gave itself to Duniya. She counted the number of invitees several times. She was like the proverbial Arab with ten donkeys for sale, who forgot to count whichever animal he was riding, but got the figure right when he wasn’t on a donkey’s back.

“Have you thought of a restaurant to go to?” she asked.

“It depends whether we want to eat in a restaurant in the centre or go to a drive-in restaurant outside town,” he said.

“What’s your preference?” she asked.

“You decide,” he said.

Here we are, she thought, neither able to make a decision for fear of hurting the other. Will this happen whenever we come to the junction where the road branches into two? Decisively, she said, “Let’s go to Croce del Sud.”

“Fine, I’ll book a table,” he offered.

With a snap, her eyes shut and opened, so that a momentary darkness was followed immediately by one full of bright sunshine. She was exhausted. Then Qaasim’s turning up when Fariida had only just arrived rather complicated matters. The two of them had called at the city flat, which had looked impressively cosy and welcoming. She hoped Abshir would like it.

Now the airport tower came into view, and Bosaaso asked, “How many of us are coming to dinner, then?”

“I have counted seven,” she said.

“Seven is an ominous number that brings good fortune.”

Then he manoeuvred his way through the narrow entrance to the parking lot. He searched for a place where they could park all three cars side by side. He had just found such a place, when he saw the plane come in to land.

In half an hour, Abshir, her beloved brother, was coming off the plane, the first passenger to do so. Duniya’s blood pounded in her ears, thinking not only of Abshir, but also asking herself to whom she would first give the news that she had decided to marry Bosaaso: the bridegroom himself or her brother, a piece of good news with which to welcome him.

Like a chick breaking out of its shock of an outer shell; like an infant’s eyes able to see for the first time; like a moth opening its baby wings to fly; like shapes that come, go and return, human forms that have voices, that answer to names if you recall what to call them, human forms that speak one’s name “Duniya.” She remembered that some time in the past, she had felt light like the mythical night journey in the Koran and had flown away; remembered falling asleep some time in the past, and when she had awoken, the foundling had died. Duniya now wondered to herself if she were hallucinating, she was sure she had lost touch with the physical reality surrounding her, and sensed delirium engulfing her, making her feel giddy, the way labour pains desensitize a woman so she cannot feel the pain because there is too much of it.

She was a traveller who had just arrived and was suffering from physical exhaustion. She couldn’t trust her feet to carry her anywhere, and her ears were filled with compressed air, and her head was entertaining a thousand and one thoughts which had to wait until the right moment came. She was an uncle meeting his nieces and nephews in person for the first time; she was a brother meeting his sister Duniya after so many years; she was a man encountering his brother-in-law-elect, someone whom he had known before, in another context; she was a man meeting two good-looking teenagers. But then there you are, maybe you are hallucinating!

Duniya’s memory, she would be the first to admit, was fragmentary and full of hiatuses, like a photographer who, while the group of which she was a member posed in front of a camera, adjusted the timing wrongly, giving herself insufficient time before taking her own place in the group portrait.

There is nothing like heightened consciousness to make one’s centre shift. Duniya would explain to Bosaaso later that evening that she had suffered from some form of psychic disturbance, of the kind likely to demonstrate itself when one’s brain cells receive a greater amount of impressions than they can cope with. She didn’t know how else to describe what she had felt.

In spite of all this, everything had gone well. Qaasim had been most helpful in arranging for Abshir to walk through the VIP corridor, and not have to open any of his seven bags for customs. Those present each gave a hand in carrying the bags to the waiting cars. Duniya didn’t know much of what happened, not until they got home. By then, all the others had gone, only family remained, and Bosaaso had been accepted as a bona fide member of it.

In her head, Duniya had many unanswered and unasked queries. For instance: How had she introduced Bosaaso? As Abshir’s brother-in-law-elect? Or just a friend? She was sure Abshir could see that her relationship with Bosaaso deserved to be properly introduced. But did she make a mess of it all? And with whom had Fariida gone? With Qaasim, in his car?

Once Duniya came to, the universe of her imagination was at her beck and call. She could now see Abshir properly, hear his deep voice, remember all his kind gestures, his unlimited generosity. It remained to her a mystery why she always accepted Abshir’s gifts, whereas she felt ill at ease receiving other people’s.

Abshir was a tall man, with a stoop, whose posture made him appear well over six foot. He was very dark with long limbs, a wide mouth and thick lips. For a man his age, he had a lot of hair, although a few grey hairs showed through. His hands were large, his fingers long. His eyes, when listening, shone with eager expectation. Abshir was a heavy smoker, a cigarette every quarter of an hour, and he had a dry cough. Abshir loved chewing raw garlic, a habit he shared with Nasiiba, and he and his niece were of a similar temperament, although Mataan resembled him more closely.

He had a gentle laugh, very soft, hardly audible. Now he was laughing because someone had told him he had been spared the bouquet-giving ceremony of a niece in white, with a bunch of famished roses.

Having seen the Vespa Mataan had borrowed from Waris’s cousin, Abshir offered to buy his nephew a motor scooter if he did well in his exam. When told that Duniya and the children would no longer be living in Qaasim’s flat, but in another in the city centre, Abshir asked if it was possible for him to buy a pied-a-terre, for which Duniya would be responsible, or live in. No wonder they had nicknamed him “Scelaro,” He was fast.

He, Bosaaso and Mataan were sitting in the courtyard, chatting. The two older men had many friends in common, and each was inquiring of the other about them. Mataan listened attentively, his mouth gaping open, looking admiringly from one to the other. Bosaaso was thrilled to talk about the good times he and Abshir had enjoyed in Rome. How were Abshir’s Italian wife and two daughters? Were they still living in Trastevere or had they moved? What about Bosaaso’s Australian and South African friends, were they still there, working for the FAO?

“How’s Mire?” Abshir asked.

Bosaaso gave Abshir such a quick run-down of what Mire was doing that Mataan wondered if there wasn’t more to what Bosaaso and Mire were up to, coming all the way as they had done from Germany and the USA respectively, and donating their services to their country.

“I would love to see Mire,” said Abshir.

“He’s coming to dinner tonight,” said Bosaaso.

Abshir turned to Mataan, “Where are we having dinner tonight, Mataan?”

“Maybe Mother has organized something, but I don’t know.”

“Duniya is inviting us out tonight,” Bosaaso declared.

“Where?” Abshir’s eyes lit up eagerly.

After a pause, Bosaaso said, “Croce del Sud.”

Duniya joined them and stood silently in the parenthesis her arrival opened. Abshir took a loving look at her, then, as his sister sat down beside him, said to Bosaaso, “Is Croce still open?”

“It is,” said Bosaaso. “It has become a bit seedy, but some of the waiters are still there from the days before independence, and they still bow at the appearance of a white-face, because white hands offer better tips than dark ones. But you get excellent service if your dark hand offers a fifteen per cent tip, five per cent higher than the pink hand.”

Reminiscing, Abshir turned to Mataan and Duniya. “You know, we weren’t allowed to go anywhere near Croce del Sud in the fifties, when the Italians were the master race here. Nor were the waiters allowed to wear shoes.”

Duniya felt foolish interrupting the flow of the conversation with a question, but asked, “Why do Italians believe they are the ones who taught Somalis to wear shoes, as if the whole venture of their so-called higher civilization comprised a gimmicky habit of a pair of feet-covering objects, Abshir?”

“Why, I’ve never thought of that,” he said, self-censoriously.

“Neither had I,” Bosaaso added.

Then Abshir coughed, his ribs heaving. His chest exploded with a loud cough a second and a third time. He said, “Don’t anyone tell me to stop smoking, because I won’t.” And he smiled, wrinkling the corners of his eyes.

“No one will,” Duniya said.

“You mean Shiriye won’t?” Abshir queried, surprising everybody.

Duniya, who didn’t speak, thought of Abshir as Nasiiba’s kindred; but never mind.

After a pause, Abshir said to Duniya, “How is our half-brother, anyway?”

Duniya’s breathing rustled like silk touching rough skin, as she mumbled something brief and unpleasant about Shiriye.

“Do you think Shiriye will give me my share of the bridewealth which he is said to have collected from Zubair for your hand?” Abshir teased her. “Or half of what he got from Taariq?” He reached for her hand which he held in both his. In fondness.

“I doubt it very much,” said Duniya.

When Abshir coughed his dry cough a few more times, Duniya freed her hand from his hold. She left, excusing herself as though attending to an urgent matter.

“Tell me something about yourself,” Abshir said to his nephew.

“There is nothing to tell really,” Mataan responded shyly.

“How’s that?” said Abshir.

“He’s excellent at school, the best in mathematics, I’ve been told,” Bosaaso interjected.

Rather emphatically, Abshir said, “I see,” as if he knew a lot more than he was willing to give away Then he continued, “What do you want to study when you go to university, Mataan?”

“I haven’t decided,” said Mataan.

“You have one more academic year to go, haven’t you?” said Abshir.

Bosaaso said, “Plus two years, one in which he must do national service and a second year as an army conscript.”

“How is your Italian?” Abshir asked Mataan.

“Not good enough to study at an Italian university unless I do one of those very intensive courses they give in Perugia.” For Mataan, things were happening too fast. Uncle Scelaro was too quick, but he was too slow; even so he was responding with a heightened enthusiasm that suited the occasion.

Abshir said, “Or would you prefer to go to an English-speaking university, in the USA or Canada, I mean is your English good enough for you to take a course in mathematics?”

Mataan was not sure if he wished to take a degree in mathematics, but he didn’t say that. He was too intimidated and things were happening at a faster rate than he’d been used to.

“Well talk more then,” Abshir suggested, adding after an appropriate pause, and after looking from Bosaaso to Mataan, “I trust we can find a way to have him exempted from national and military service?”

“I trust there are ways of doing that,” Bosaaso said.

Abshir suppressed a smile before it subverted the subtlety of a knowing grin which had spread itself all over his face. He said, “What about Nasiiba?”

Since no one could take upon himself or herself to speak for her, Nasiiba was given a shout, and she came out laden with an armful of clothes which she had taken out of the gift-bags her uncle had brought from Rome for her. She was already wearing a pair of Levi jeans and a matching denim shirt. She said, excited beyond her own measure, “How did you guess my height, waist and all that, Uncle?”

“Miski gave them to me,” he said.

Nasiiba tripped on some of the dresses she was carrying, as she moved towards them. Yarey was on her heels, and she too was carrying a legion of gifts her uncle had given her. The girls’ arrival suddenly turned the place into a noisy one, and Bosaaso got up and said, “Perhaps I should go now.”

“When do we see you?” Abshir asked him.

“Why don’t you come with me and collect the car? Then I won’t need to fetch you this evening,” Bosaaso said.

Abshir pondered for a moment, as if unsure where in the world he was, and then said, “I was meaning to get to the car hire agency as soon as I could. How will you move around if you lend me yours?”

“I have a taxi as my fall-back when I have no transport,” said Bosaaso.

Duniya was called, and she, Bosaaso and Abshir thought about the best way to handle this. The fact that Nasiiba stayed out of this didn’t pass unnoticed.

“What do you suggest, Duniya?” Abshir said.

Duniya suggested that Mataan go with them to show Abshir the way back.

“Shall we go for a drive, you and I?” said Abshir. “When I come back?”

“That’s a lovely idea,” said Duniya.

Nasiiba was clearly excited, and she slid in and out of joyous moods. At one point, in fact as soon as she and her mother were let alone, she came out to where Duniya was sitting, wearing a fashionable outfit Abshir had brought her. Sounding high-strung, she spoke what amounted, in her mother’s opinion, to a non-sequitur, saying, “Have you noticed of late how many dogs there are in any African city? Dogs roaming around the streets in packs, full of menace like wolves let out of a zoo? You see them everywhere, foraging in the very garbage bins the urchins have emptied of everything except the bones they cannot chew; these dogs attack pedestrians minding their own business, especially after dark. Have you any idea where these terrifying beasts come from?”

Duniya didn’t seem moved and remained non-committal.

“According to Taariq,” Nasiiba continued, “most of these dogs at one time or another belonged to Europeans or Americans with plenty of food to spare and human affection to indulge on these beasts that actually live in the same spacious and well-to-do houses as their children. Now the truth is, these dogs received more food and attentive love than most Somalis, and then, between one weekend and the next, the masters went home, leaving behind these spoiled creatures. This has been a pattern, too much love, then with frightening suddenness, homelessness and a hostile Islamic community ready to stone them on the slightest pretext. In short, the dogs are turned into schizoids.”

“What are you driving at, Nasiiba? Please come to the point!” Duniya said.

Then Nasiiba paused for a long while. Finally she said, “This is that level of reality in which you might discern a certain similarity between dogs and some Third World dictators who receive the pampered approval of their European and American masters until their usefulness has ceased, dictators who are abandoned to the dogs of bad fortune. On a personal level, the Europeans and Americans living in Africa behave in a manner akin to that of their governments on a national level. What I am trying to say…”

Duniya’s body stiffened. Glaring at Nasiiba, she demanded, “Do you think I am thick?”

“Why?”

“I am not thick!” said Duniya. “That’s all.”

Puzzled, Nasiiba stared at her mother who was leaving the room to prepare herself for the drive with Abshir.

Abshir was at the wheel, driving in an easterly direction, towards the sea. “You can’t imagine how much I missed seeing, swimming in or being near the Indian Ocean,” he said.

She watched him drive. He was a chimney and was smoking out his lungs; and his whole body, now and then, exploded, turning pale like unburied ashes left overnight in a brazier. She began to wonder why Mataan had always reminded her of Abshir, although the two didn’t resemble each other physically. She had never seen their own grandfather, but thought that his nickname was indicative of a stoop, his nickname being Tuerre, meaning the man with the hump. She told herself that certain physical characteristics run in some families, jumping hopscotch-style from one generation to another.

“Tell me a little about Bosaaso,” he said.

“We’re thinking of getting married.”

“Is anything in the way?” Abshir asked, as if he wished to get it removed, whatever it was. They both thought about Shiriye, although neither invoked his accursed name.

“He proposed; I asked for time to think it over.”

“Are you still thinking? Or have you decided?”

“I’ve been turning it over and over in my mind, now the answer is yes, now no, although mostly it has been yes. I am very fond of him, love him actually in my own way,” she qualified. “He deserves better than I can offer to him. He is too trusting, he has no energy for fighting; I realise I am a bit of a handful.”

“I hope he is aware of what he is in for,” said Abshir with a smile.

“I’m sure he is.”

“He has been rather deferential to me, as in-laws are towards one another. And when we were in his car, taking him home, he suggested I drive. Bosaaso might have been a young man appearing in front of his prospective father-in-law.” Abshir stubbed out a cigarette, only to light another, and continued, “Love has a certain odour which is seldom smelt, only seen. I scented it on arrival and saw it again when I shook hands with him early this afternoon.”

“The reason I didn’t say yes when I could have was that I don’t want to give satanic tongues the opportunity to wag like a dog’s tail and say that I am marrying him for his money and American Green Card,” Duniya said.

“That’s why I spoke to Mataan in his presence, in a sense to assure Bosaaso that your children won’t be a financial burden on him. I will make that absolutely clear at the earliest opportunity Their education, here or abroad, preferably university studies abroad, all these are my responsibility The poor man has spent a quarter of his life raising other people’s offspring.”

Duniya uttered a chuckle, something between a whimper and a worried laugh, and then said, “Thank you.”

“Let it be understood this in no way should put pressure on you to decide either way You do what gives you pleasure. You marry if you want to, you don’t if you don’t wish to. Your destiny is in your hands. But the children’s school fees are my responsibility, and mine alone,” he said.

She choked on tears of her rejoicing and couldn’t speak for a long time. Finally, she said, “I’ve always wondered why it is that I’ve accepted all the gifts you’ve given me, when I fret if others come towards me intending to give me something. Can you tell me why?”

“Because when you were less than an hour old,” he answered, “and you refused to breast-feed and our mother was too unwell to take care of you, it was I who fed you the first drop of milk, a gift you wouldn’t take from anyone else, including our father, the midwife or other women of the neighbourhood.” He paused, placing a wedge of a cigarette between his lips, maybe so as not to smile.

“My first conscious moment when I received the first drop of life into my mouth is thirty-five years away,” she said, “I’ve been a mother three times, married twice, fallen in love once, or I believe I have. What is it that you have that others don’t? There must be something.”

“What about Qaasim: haven’t you been accepting to stay in his flat more or less rent free?” asked Abshir.

“Our deal had been based on an understanding, which got pulled down the instant a misunderstanding between me and his wife Muraayo occurred. That’s now over and I am moving out of his house and life too.”

“What about your relationship with Bosaaso?”

“He’s often been more of a recipient than a giver,” she said.

In the city centre, Abshir was reorienting himself, remembering sights he hadn’t seen for a quarter of a century; Duniya was staring at some of these because they had assumed a certain relevance, in that they reminded her of Bosaaso. Abshir was saying that little had changed since he last walked these streets, a taller building here, a semi-developed plot there, but the grid, pattern and mapping of Mogadiscio had stayed unaltered, especially in the centre. It still had its charm and attraction.

“The sea,” he said, “my love.”

She thought of Bosaaso, but didn’t say anything.

“I can smell it,” Abshir said.

Then his face was marked with gridded lines forming a smile. Did love reside in the odour of one? as Abshir had put it. Remembering the Italian film Profumo di Donna, Duniya was able to review her life between the blinking of an eye. Then she asked herself whether we wear perfumes to supplement or suppress natural body odours that betray our emotions.

Abshir parked opposite what had once been a fish market. The old post office was somewhere in the vicinity, he remembered. They walked up some steps, and turned left, and then down cobblestones eighty-odd years old, towards the ocean. They touched, they held hands as they strode together, silent.

They stood by the railing, which careless drivers had collided with a great many times, but which had never given way. She reminded herself to be careful: life was a driving-seat and accidents were blind curves, ambushing one. She cheered up, telling herself that dinner-time wasn’t that far off and they would all be there, Bosaaso included.

Abshir said, “But you haven’t told me how you’ve been?” And he lit a cigarette.

“It has been a long journey up and up and up, here,” Duniya said, “here, here I am, that is,” a pause as if to emphasize a point, “and there, down below, feels like way, way down, and the two stations are separated by a wide gulf, and I am senseless with giddiness whenever I examine how far up I have come, thanks to you, Abshir.”

“Come, come,” he said embarrassed, and wiped his face with a handkerchief. Silent, he waited. She went on, encouraged by his silence. “To know how I am and how I have fared, you must understand why I resist all kinds of domination, including that of being given something. As my epitaph I would like to have the following written: ‘Here lies Duniya who distrusted givers’.”

“I’ll say something, if I may,” said Abshir.

Duniya nodded.

“You are a woman and younger than me,” said Abshir, “I suppose these facts are central to our gift relationship, yours and mine.”

“And you give because you’re guilty?”

He answered in a round-about way, “If you were a boy, you wouldn’t have been married off to a man as old as your grandfather in the first place, and in the second, you might have got a scholarship to a university of your choice, because you were brilliant and ambitious. An injustice had been done. It has been my intention to right the wrong as best I could. I am sorry.”

He indicated that he was ready to go back. It took them a very short time to agree that they should first go to her place and drop her off. He would return to the flat in the city, shower and change, and then come to fetch them himself in Bosaaso’s car to go together to Croce del Sud for dinner.

Then they had time to talk about Gisela, Abshir’s wife, and the two daughters, Madalena and Annalisa. It was no secret that both girls hated Somalis, to whom they were rude on the phone. On occasion, they would even close the door in a caller’s face. But they had welcomed Duniya, when she had visited them, and they got on well. All the same Abshir couldn’t help mentioning his family’s growing suspicion that he was planning to buy property; and when they learnt that he had taken a few thousand dollars out of his bank account “as though he would acquire the whole country in one single stroke,” his daughters wept for hours on end and peace was made between them only when he promised he was returning to Rome after he had paid a visit to Duniya and their cousins.

“Are you buying property then?” she asked.

“A pied-a-terre, to begin with, in which to house you,” he said, “and you are free to live in it until you’ve sorted out your situation. A pied-a-terre small enough for the children to stay in if they choose not to share a house with you and Bosaaso if you happen to marry. And for me to stay in if I visit.”

“Too many ifs,” she said.

“You’re a pile of ifs and maybes, if you’ll pardon me,” Abshir said.

“Of course,” she said.

Then answering a general question about Bosaaso and herself, Duniya reviewed her own story from the moment it began telling itself, omitting not a single significant detail. Soon after she had finished telling her tale, they reached her place.

He said, “There is no going back, only forward.”

“Let’s hope so,” she said.

By general consent, Mire was seated at the head of a table known to the management of the Croce del Sud as “Sette,” which in their jargon meant the table could seat seven. It had only one end, the other having been pushed against the wall. So three people occupied either side of it, and Mire its only head. Bosaaso had booked the table and arrived earlier than the others, being an anxious type, the kind of man who got to the airport half an hour before the airline people thought necessary. The waiters had set the table under his supervision. While waiting for the other guests to arrive, he had had two long drinks of a fruit concoction, and not a drop of liquor.

Then Duniya and her entourage arrived, all five of them. And before their greeting noises had died down, Mire made his entrance. They all hushed, to let Mire and Abshir greet each other, properly and in total comfort. Duniya saw Mire’s eyes burn like a curtain ablaze as she shook with passion Abshir’s hand and then hugged him.

A couple of waiters arrived to lead them to their table. People’s heads turned to watch them walk past. Duniya had been dressed by Nasiiba in a plain-cut but very attractive print dress, which her favourite seamstress had tailored for an occasion such as this. As Nasiiba had suggested, she wore her hair uncovered, in a bun, making her look almost as tall as Mire, who was a considerable height whilst standing among women. Nasiiba was in a baggy dress, fashionable at the time, and like Yarey, she had on something Abshir had brought them from Italy. The men, all four of them, had changed into something less fancy, no dinner jackets, no ties, in short, nothing quite as impressive as the women’s. Duniya’s dress didn’t feel tight either at the waist or the armpits.

They were all clearly happy to be together and to talk to one another.

Duniya and Bosaaso were the centre-pieces of the gathering, not Abshir. Everyone could see that.

The waiters wouldn’t leave until everyone, male and female, young and old, was seated. Bosaaso’s eyes turned to Duniya for guidance. Yarey was placed between Duniya and Uncle Abshir, whereas Bosaaso was made to take the chair facing Duniya with Nasiiba sitting next to him, and Mataan opposite Uncle Abshir.

Dispensing with the formality of menus, Mire asked the waiters what they had. There was no point in whetting appetites with a dish listed on the menu but which was most likely not available. They listened to the waiters give a recitation of the dishes that were to be had, providing explanations to queries coming from Yarey, Nasiiba or a gentle “What’s that, Uncle?” from Mataan. Being themselves semi-literate, the waiters were no doubt content to take the orders verbally.

Then a waiter of the older generation, who had worked in Croce del Sud when the Italians were still the master race of Mogadiscio, came, not to serve or take their order, but to pay his respects to Dr Mire who had been his wife’s doctor. The waiter was of the River People, with a broad, handsome smile, very smooth skin, growing not a single hair on his chin or upper lip. He half-bowed deferentially towards Duniya and his large eyes make a quick survey of Sette and decided he would take over. He dismissed the two younger waiters with a friendly gesture, and he went round making sure the forks and knives were in their proper places. He apologized again and again, charming Duniya, who placed herself in his experienced hands, as it were, out of which she didn’t mind eating.

When he left, the subject of conversation suggested itself to the gathering. Did the older waiter make one feel better and more comfortable because he had been trained by the Italians and had been more adept at his profession than the younger ones who had probably never received as rigorous a training as him? Was this symptomatic of the situation, a regrettable condition in which Somalis were seldom able to run a restaurant proficiently and also profitably? The ball was kicked around, now Mire scored a goal, now Bosaaso and now Abshir. Nasiiba, Yarey and Mataan listened respectfully. Duniya couldn’t help remarking to herself how silent Nasiiba had been since Abshir’s arrival.

As the others engaged in polite talk, Duniya thought to herself that little is revealed to oneself directly. Revelations are received from out of a mist of doubts, in caves, in the dark, out of a child’s mouth, or via the wise utterances of an elderly or mad person. She decided that her own epiphanic instant had occurred at a moment, on a morning, when a story chose to tell itself to her, through her, a story whose clarity was contained in the creative utterance, Let there be a man, and there was a story.

Half-attentive to her guests at the table, Duniya looked at Abshir, who had an unlit cigarette in one hand, and a light in the other. And he was saying to Mire, “Claudia sends her love, and she gave me a parcel for you and a letter. Now here is the letter,” and he gave it to him, “but the parcel is in Bosaaso’s car, but I didn’t bring it into the restaurant because it is too bulky to cart around.”

“Thank you,” Mire said, putting the letter in his pocket.

At the mention of Claudia’s name, Mire’s features seemed too reticent, too unprepared to display emotions in the presence of others. In fact, he appeared uninterested in asking Abshir questions about Claudia. Instead he asked, “When will you come to dinner at my place?”

“Give me a day or two and I’ll be able to know what my plans are,” Abshir replied.

“Take your time.”

Abshir nodded.

Mire said to Abshir: “How long are you here, by the way?”

“A maximum often days.”

Duniya’s centres shifted. The skin on her face felt too tight, like that of a woman half-way through washing off her make-up and who receives a visitor. She was thinking that beginning the story had been easy, like extracting a milk-tooth. But how was she to end it?

Here, she paused, for the waiters had come, bringing the food. Looking at the pepper-steak, she told herself that it was not she who had ordered it, but another Duniya. But where was this other Duniya?

She looked around, and everyone seemed to be pleased with what they had been given, and some of those present had started eating, and she heard bon appetit said a number of times. Garlic, pervasive as love, permeated the senses, and everyone smelt of it, even those who were not eating dishes which contained the root.

She was asking herself if she was content that her guests could get on with the telling of their respective stories without her. And the other Duniya with her tale? Then someone was mentioning her name, pairing it with Bosaaso’s, and Abshir was raising a glass in a toast. Everyone else was standing up, only Duniya remained seated. Her children were coming round to hug her, and they were saying sweet things in her ears and wishing her well Mire left his place at the head of the table, and came round to congratulate her, and Abshir responded in a toast, coupling her name with Bosaaso’s, but the speech was brief, and in it he gave an elder brother’s love and blessings to a younger sister getting married. And Nasiiba broke a glass when she had emptied it, and Mataan said that only a wedding at which something broke was considered lucky. Bosaaso and Duniya were treated as man and wife.

Whom was Bosaaso married to?

Which Duniya?

This or the other?

She wished she knew.

Duniya, the chronicler, is no longer certain how to go on, and nothing short of a much longer pause will enable her to look back on the events as they took place in order for her to describe them accurately.

At one point Nasiiba said to someone, “Don’t all stories end in marriage or the dissolution of such a union?”

Abshir was chain-smoking while speaking; among other things, he was saying that all stories are one story, whose principal theme is love. And if the stories feel different, it is only because the journeys the characters are to undertake take different routes to get to their final destination.

More toasts were drunk, and champagne was offered to those who wanted it.

“All stories,” concluded Abshir, “celebrate, in elegiac terms, the untapped sources of energy, of the humanness of women and men.” Then Duniya smelt Bosaaso’s odour, because he had come round to where she was sitting, and they were kissing while the others toasted them again and again. The world was an audience, ready to be given Duniya’s story from the beginning.