Hiding in Plain Sight

1

“Like beads unstrung,” Bella says to Marcella.

“What a terrible thing death is!” says Marcella to Bella.

They hug for a long time, the elderly Italian woman holding the younger woman, each wailing louder than the other — their lamentation a survivor’s threnody expressive of so huge a loss.

The doors of their respective apartments are open. They sob bitterly in the corridor, neither of them battling to hold back their keening. Some of the neighbors come out of their apartments and stand gawking at the women and exchanging questioning glances.

It is Bella’s ill luck that she was one of the last to hear of Aar’s death. When he was killed, she was finishing up a photo assignment in Bahia for the German magazine GEO. She had just cleared customs at Fiumicino when she came upon the headline in the Italian daily La Repubblica. According to witnesses, a suicide bomber blew up a car at the main entrance to the UN compound, then four heavily armed gunmen entered the building and a gun battle lasting more than an hour ensued. In all, twenty people lost their lives, fifteen of them Somalis and five foreigners, Aar among them.

Bella had barely finished the first paragraph when her legs buckled and she collapsed at the feet of a man offering her taxi service. When she came to, a throng of people had crowded around her and a fierce debate had ensued as to what to do with her. The taxi driver, an elderly Sicilian with a broad face sporting at least a week of stubble and a sweet smile showing only a few front teeth, bent down and helped her to sit up. “Signorina, take notice,” he said. “You are in Rome, whose proud citizens frown on public weeping.” He offered her a pile of paper napkins. “Here, dry your tears.”

The taxi driver, a gentleman of rare breeding and charm, led her to his car and they sat together until she came to her senses. Then he drove her home, left his car parked illegally in the street, helped her up the stairway with her luggage, cameras and all, and refused to accept the fare.

On the drive, Bella used her phone to glean further details from the Internet. The attack was remarkable for its ruthlessness, which had attracted intense international attention. The body parts of the dead were found strewn about the outbuildings, so charred and mangled as to be unidentifiable. Aar’s head was found far from where the rest of his body fell, although that was according to some of the unreliable Somali websites, which are given to exaggeration and releasing unverified information. Those body parts that were identifiably Somali were buried in a mass grave, and those of a recognizably paler shade were collected and put in containers to be catalogued later before being passed on to their next of kin.

Now, at the sight of her beloved friend and neighbor, who has been listening for her return, Bella is again undone. Marcella holds her until her sobbing ceases, then they retreat into Bella’s apartment, still clinging tightly to each other.

Marcella makes her sit. “I’ll make you tea with sugar, the way Somalis like it,” Marcella says. Bella stares back at her, as if she doesn’t understand the language or can’t comprehend why anyone would have sugar in her tea. “Please,” she says. Too weak to sit up straight and too jet-lagged to keep her eyes open, too exhausted to sleep and much too disoriented to take in all that has happened, Bella is at the point of losing control over her bodily movements.

Marcella sits down opposite her. The old woman has known Bella literally from birth. She remembers the day in 1981 when Hurdo came to have her second child at Mogadiscio’s Digfer Hospital. It was a Muslim holiday and the hospital was short-staffed; Marcella, as head of obstetrics, was putting in a long shift, and it fell to her to perform the delivery. My lucky day, Hurdo always said. Hurdo and her husband, Digaaleh, were colleagues of Marcella’s husband on the law faculty, and the two couples knew each other well. Hurdo was a much-adored professor of international law, having gained her higher degree from Bologna in the days when a large number of Somalis pursued their professional training in Italy.

There was an additional layer to the intimacy of Marcella’s connection with Bella, in that she was among the few who knew of Hurdo’s affair with Giorgio Fiori, a Dante scholar on the faculty of letters, and she suspected that Bella was Giorgio’s child even before it was confirmed. So she had a certain proprietary feeling about Bella from the beginning, which was rekindled years later, when Marcella and her husband — who had died recently of lymphoma, poor soul — took on the role of surrogate parents to Bella in Rome, helping her to find her apartment opposite their own and watching after it when photography assignments took her far and wide.

Lately, Marcella has been losing more and more of her recall, fading like a cloth losing the brightness of its original dye. Now she is reaching for the memory of the last time she saw Aar, but it is earlier memories that surface. Aar was twelve years old when Bella was born. From the beginning, he had an older brother’s protectiveness and affection for her, buying her toys with his own pocket money and helping with her studies (she was bad at mathematics and science). He’d encouraged her interest in photography; in fact, he bought her first camera and sat for her as she began to master her art. One of Marcella’s great joys was to host brother and sister together, delighting in the way they comforted each other, holding hands and hugging at every opportunity. They had a deeper affection for each other than could exist between even the most intimate husband and wife, Marcella thinks. But still she can’t retrieve the memory of Aar’s last visit.

“When was Aar here last?” she asks.

But the question leads Bella to a dim hall lined with fogged mirrors, where she searches frenziedly for answers and, finding none, weeps some more. Marcella can’t think of anything to say that might help, and so she says only, “Let me make the tea.”

“Actually, I would prefer coffee,” says Bella.

“Black or with milk?”

“A latte if possible.”

Marcella knows how to work Bella’s espresso machine and goes about feeding the grinder with coffee beans, apologizing for the hideous noise. She regrets that since her husband’s death she hasn’t been looking after the young woman’s apartment as before. In the old days, she would often do the tidying herself or hire a Filipino woman to do it, services that Bella would insist on reimbursing with money and favors in return. Now Marcella notices the dishes in the sink; the books lying open, abandoned like orphans; the drawn curtains; the windows unopened for days on end so that the whole apartment emits a musty odor. This is not clean living, she thinks. In an effort to alleviate the dark mood, she parts the curtains to let in the daylight and opens the windows. She sets the coffee to brewing while she begins to clear away the clutter then interrupts herself to froth the milk and pour the latte into a large mug, worried that Bella might spill it in her state of discomposure.

“Here,” she says, handing it to Bella. “This will do you good.”

Bella receives the mug with both hands and murmurs her thanks. But she doesn’t take a sip, not yet; it is too hot. And when she does, she continues to look dazed, her eyes unfocused, her hands trembling as she lifts the mug to her lips and lowers it again, untasted.

Marcella has noticed that the red button of the message machine is blinking. She knows that one of the messages is her own condolence, left earlier in the day, when she was still at work and Bella had not yet returned. But there may be more. She debates whether she should bring the messages to Bella’s attention. After all, one or more may be from Aar, or from his colleagues. But Bella is staring ahead of her, looking at nothing, and Marcella decides not to mention it.

Bella looks up into Marcella’s eyes, finding comfort in their warmth and familiarity. Then, as if remembering something, she tries to stand but nearly loses her balance before she steadies herself with her hands and sits back down, narrowly missing spilling her latte, which she still has not tasted.

“What do you need done? I’ll do it. What?”

Apologetically, Bella says, “Could you please help bring in my camera cases? In my state, I left them outside, in the corridor.”

“Gladly, and you stay put.”

Marcella fetches the bags and asks if she should put them in the spare bedroom, which Bella rightly calls Aar’s room, as it is always ready to receive him — the bed made, clean towels in a neat stack, his pile of reading material (much of it novels bought at airports) at bedside, a spare pair of pajamas and hotel slippers, all of it arranged neatly as he liked things kept. Bella has never allowed anyone else to stay there. So Marcella’s question initially strikes her as almost insensitive, but after a moment of thought, she says, “Yes, in the guest room, please.”

Marcella knows all about homage to the dead. She has only recently finished going through her late husband’s things, getting rid of all but a handful that she left where he last placed them, cautioning the cleaning lady not to shift them. It is the prerogative of survivors to honor their dead and salute them the best way they can, she thinks.

When Marcella has finished moving the camera cases, Bella says, “Come and sit with me, please.” Marcella obliges, settling at the bottom end of the couch where Bella has indicated she should. Soon enough, though, an uneasy silence descends, and with it, a gnawing feeling of despair. Marcella scans the far wall of the living room, which is lined with Bella’s photographs, some of which have made her into one of the fashion industry’s most sought-after photographers. Even so, Marcella’s favorites are the family portraits, of Aar alone and with Valerie and his children at different ages. Bella has the true artist’s knack for showing the ugliness inside those she detests, Marcella thinks, as can be discerned in the photographs she took of Valerie.

In an effort to ease the tension and hardness in Bella, Marcella takes the young woman’s feet in her hands and gently massages them until she feels a kind of calmness taking hold both in her own as well as Bella’s body. Then she blurts out, “Where is Aar’s corpse?”

When Bella does not answer, Marcella persists. “Any idea when and where he will be interred?”

Marcella has always had this tendency to say the unspeakable in public, to ask the unanswerable in private. And before Bella can think what to say, the old woman says, “Will you have time to get there before his burial? I wouldn’t go to that dreadful country if I were you — but I can understand if you choose to do so. But I suppose, knowing them, they will not wait for your arrival.”

Marcella’s questions remind Bella how little even educated Europeans know about Islam, let alone about Somalis and their culture. “He’ll have been buried before dark the same day he died,” she says.

“Already buried — but where, when? Before dark?” Mercifully, Marcella stops herself before she blunders in deeper, and she stares at Bella in confusion. It is obvious that Marcella is upset with herself for asking inappropriate questions at such an inopportune time, but Bella waits to be certain Marcella is done before she says, “Aar was buried the same day he died.”

“What a way to go!” This time not even Bella’s expression of palpable distress is enough to keep Marcella from continuing in this vein. “What a way to end the noble life of a man who served everyone with honor, untainted integrity, and purpose.”

At last, Bella, wincing, takes her first sip of the latte.

“Has anyone been in touch with you officially?”

Bella looks at the blinking answering machine, and Marcella goes to it and presses the button to play back the messages. A woman speaking in perfect English with a Nordic-sounding voice has made several attempts to leave a message. In the most recent, she scarcely gets past Bella’s name before she bursts into tears and hangs up; the second time, she says, “Gunilla here,” and then, “There’s been terrible, terrible news from Mogadiscio—” She breaks off, then attempts to continue, stuttering, stopping, and weeping copiously before she again hangs up. On the third try, she says her piece, as if she were reading from a script: “Aar lost his life in a terrorist suicide bombing. The Somali authorities have ordered that his corpse and the others will all be interred in a mass grave in Mogadiscio.”

Bella utters an Irish curse, wishing the killers hell and worse in the spirit of all the saints of every faith anywhere. This message is followed by several earlier messages from Aar, who sounded desperate to speak with his sister. At the sound of them, Bella breaks down again. Marcella shushes her, tapping her cheeks and then holding her face in her gentle hands until the weeping ends. And for the first time, Marcella allows herself to wonder to whom the responsibility of informing Aar’s children and Valerie will fall.

Aloud she says, “Would you like me to call the children or had you rather do it yourself?”

Of course, Bella insists on being the one to tell her nephew and niece about their father’s death. As for Valerie, Bella will start by calling her mother, who will know how to locate her if anyone can.

Bella remembers that the Hausa way of informing a relation living far away about the loss of a parent, a sibling, or another intimate is to send an emissary to deliver the news in person. The emissary dispatched on such a delicate mission does not share the sad news, however, until they are in close proximity to a place where a wide community of friends and relatives are on hand to provide support. A pity, Bella thinks, that whoever it was who called and left the news of Aar’s death on the answering machine — or whoever turned it into international headline news — did not take a leaf from the Hausa book of etiquette.

Actually, Bella is not certain from whom she learned about this custom. Perhaps it was Marcella, come to think of it. As a former senior obstetrician at a Vatican-run hospital in one of Rome’s poor neighborhoods, she had become deeply familiar with corpses and what becomes of them, depending on the faith of the dead and their relatives. She and Bella had often discussed the Irish and their wakes, the Yoruba and their drawn-out rituals, the Muslims, the Jews, the Zoroastrians, the Hindus, and the Catholics, each in their own way confronting the moment of death with a rationale that is unique to their culture and belief systems. But Bella suspects that it was not Marcella but her Malian lover who told her of the Hausa’s sensitive handling of news of bereavement. And as much as she wishes she could spare Dahaba and Salif the pain of receiving the news in the same boorish way it came to her, she is aware that this is impossible in the age of the Internet and round-the-clock news channels that jabber on and on, forever upsetting one.

But before she can telephone her nephew and niece, she needs to stop Marcella from yammering away. She asks the old lady to go to her own apartment and call the airlines to buy Bella a business-class ticket to Nairobi on the next flight available. “Use my credit card,” she says, offering it.

“Business class at short notice?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It will be prohibitively expensive.”

Bella says, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime purchase. Or at least I hope so.”

With Marcella gone at last, Bella picks up the telephone to dial her nephew. It has barely begun to ring when her weeping and wailing starts anew. This is no good, she thinks, as the phone rings and rings. She hangs up without waiting for voice mail to kick in. To fortify her resolve, she pours herself a strong drink, which she downs in a single gulp. Thus hardened, she calls Wendy, Valerie’s mother. The two women are fond of each other. What is more, Wendy got on very well with Aar and looked upon him with great approval, not only because she saw how devoted a father he was, but also because he gave her as much access to her grandchildren as she wished. For their part, Dahaba and Salif loved their grandmother and looked forward to spending a month a year with her in Leicester when the schools in Kenya closed for the summer.

As soon as she has recognized Bella’s voice, Wendy lets out a long whimper and then stammers weepily, “I’ve been in a state since hearing of it. You know, I loved Aar more than I’ve cared for my own daughter.”

“Where is she?” asks Bella. “Any idea?”

“She is currently in Uganda, with that woman.”

Bella knows that there is no love lost between Wendy and Padmini, whom she blames for Valerie’s decision to walk out on her marriage. But when Wendy offers to call and break the news of Aar’s death to her daughter, Bella is all too glad to accept the offer.

They talk some more, and when Wendy speaks of being overwhelmed by the barbarity of the killings, Bella silently remembers something Hurdo once said after their country collapsed into anarchy and they fled Mogadiscio: “Death in Somalia seldom bothers to announce its arrival. In fact, death calls with the arrogance of a guest confident of receiving a warm welcome at any time, no questions asked.”

The church bells in Trastevere chime, as if in tribute to Aar. Bella pictures death riding a tide of undulant waves of unheralded emotion — and she weeps again, unable to stop shaking, the hour as dark as a cave.

“And what do they say down in Somalia?” Wendy is asking.

Bella, despite herself, recounts some of the gorier details from one of the Somali websites, which reported without giving any evidence that one of the terrorists who entered the UN building after the suicide bombing held a knife to Aar’s throat and then stood by, waiting and watching, until his blood drained like a goat being made halal.

“Shame on the lot of them,” Wendy curses.

Bella knows that these terrorists aren’t true Muslims. Yes, she is a secularist, no more than culturally Muslim. But with a mother born and raised a Muslim and a father born in Italy to Catholic parents and brought up a Christian, she believed she had the undisputed authority to choose her faith. In her youth, growing up in a Muslim country, she embraced her mother’s faith. But she no longer thinks of herself as a true Muslim.

Wendy is saying, “Death is a given, isn’t it?”

“We have no idea of the time of our dying.”

“Nor of the manner of our dying.”

Bella says, “It is only that Aar’s death adds terror to the idea of death, the idea of dying, because he was unprepared for death and did not deserve to die in that infernal manner.”

“He was a good man,” Wendy affirms.

And they say their good-byes.

—

Unable to reach her niece and nephew on their mobile phones, Bella rings the home of their hosts, the principal of the school and his wife. Surely the attack has been headline news in Kenya as well. Finally, Catherine Kariuki, the wife of the principal, answers the phone. Bella asks if the children have heard the news. Catherine confirms that they have and that they are taking it very badly indeed.

“How do you mean?” asks Bella.

Catherine says that they seem to be traumatized and uncertain how to act. One minute they’re a little weepy, the next minute one or the other of them says, “This was bound to happen, given where Dad was,” and the other one commiserates.

“I would like to talk to them, please.”

Catherine goes to call the children to the phone but soon comes back to say that not only won’t they open the door to Dahaba’s bedroom, where they’ve sequestered themselves, they also won’t even acknowledge her knocking or her calls to them.

So Bella simply tells Catherine that she will be on a flight to Nairobi on the morrow, and the two of them burst into tears and weep and weep and weep until one or the other of them drops the line, and the next thing Bella knows, she is holding a dead phone in her hand and listening to approaching footsteps. Looking up, she realizes that Marcella has come back with the boarding pass for the plane ticket she has booked.

Bella puts the boarding pass in the external pouch of her shoulder bag and immediately sets about packing. She decides to take along with her a couple of camera cases in addition to the ones she has brought back from Bahia — who knows how long she’ll need to stay in Nairobi; perhaps she’ll even set up a studio there. She asks Marcella to bring up a couple more from the basement of the building, where Bella stores them. Bella packs her flash leads, hot-shoe-equipped units, and several other essential items. Often, Bella entrusts this job to a young half-Eritrean woman who serves as her assistant, but there isn’t time for that. So, as Bella does not like surprises, she packs for all eventualities, such as whether the sun will bless her with its presence or fail to show, like a hurt lover. Bella knows of an Italian photographer who lost much of his work — a month’s worth — because he hadn’t prepared for the sudden dust storm that swept in after a gorgeous day in Omdurman, Sudan.

Marcella, bless her soul, keeps bringing sandwiches and drinks and asking questions. She expresses surprise at how much equipment and clothing Bella is packing. “Are you staying away for a long time?” she asks.

“What would you have me do instead?” Bella asks.

“Fetch the kids here.”

“And then what?”

“Let them go to school here or in England with their grandmother, who would be more than willing to have them stay with her,” Marcella says.

“Things seem a lot more complicated than that,” Bella says, “what with a dead father and a delinquent mother who may turn up in hopes of having a say in what happens to them. Not to mention that there is the children’s opinion to consider. Maybe they are happy where they are.”

“So are you relocating back to Africa for good?” Marcella asks. “Is that what you are intending to do, carissima?”

“Aar’s death changes all plans,” Bella replies.

“Including where you’ll live?”

“Everything,” Bella affirms.

“And the apartment, what will you do about it?”

“Aar’s death has changed everything,” Bella says again.

“But you are so young and unfulfilled!” Marcella cries, once again unable to keep from speaking her mind.

Disturbed, Bella sits on the edge of the bed, where the camera cases are still open, and puts her head in her hands. She knows there is no simple way she can explain to Marcella or anyone else what it feels like to lose Aar. And now that death has deprived her of him, how she feels she is answering a call to serve, almost a religious calling. As a young woman, she saw herself as his appendage, breathing the very oxygen he breathed. She has never married, never committed herself loyally and fully to another person, man or woman, always and forever waiting for the summons, duty-bound, steadfast in her dedication to her beloved brother, like a hound to its master. She has never forgotten the assistance and love he provided to her when she was a young girl growing up. Now it is her turn to give him and his children all the devotion they require, setting aside her own needs and desires.

“Forgive me for being selfish,” Marcella says.

Bella asks, “What are you talking about?”

“I was hoping you would be here when I go.”

“Go where? Where will you go?”

“I meant when I die,” Marcella says.

Bella is at a loss for words. After a pause, she says, “At the moment, Dahaba and Salif are my priority. You will always be there in my mind and my heart; and of course, I will rush to return if there is urgent need.”

The truth is, Bella hasn’t thought further than the next blind corner in a life marked by labyrinthine turns, as full of surprises as the paths that lead into and out of a casbah. The idea of travel, insofar as Bella is concerned, is bound up with the loading of cameras — the genesis of renewal via self-expression in everlasting images. But she feels in no condition to share all her inner tumult of worries and half-formed plans with Marcella.

“To me, you are the daughter I never had,” says Marcella.

“You’ve told me that several times.”

“I had a soft spot for Aar too.”

“I’ve always been aware of that.”

“I am bad at gaining control of my emotions.”

“Don’t give that a thought.”

“And because Aar’s death has shaken me to the marrow of my bones, I’m even more inept than usual.”

Weeping once more, they hug.

Through her tears, Bella looks down at her bare feet. She must trim her toenails before she goes to catch her flight, she thinks, soak them in very hot salt water and trim the ugly lot, as hard as a young calf’s hooves and just as dangerous, with their jagged edges. In Rio, where she visited her Brazilian lover, she hadn’t the proper scissors with which to cut them, the airline having confiscated her last pair.

“What about Valerie?” Marcella asks.

“What about her?”

“Why can’t she be with her children?”

How can Bella tell this bumbling, adorable fool that there is a right time and a wrong time and place to bring Valerie into the conversation. But Bella, though miffed, won’t say boo to Marcella or speak ill of Valerie to her.

Marcella continues. “Remember, she is their mother and no one can prevent her from making a legal claim to the children as the only surviving parent.”

Bella doesn’t tell her the plan that is beginning to take shape in her head if such a thing threatens: fight all the way to the courts to stop it from happening. She instead speaks with long-winded caution, saying, “We haven’t communicated, Valerie and I, for a very long time, and I have no idea what her plans will be when she hears of Aar’s death.”

“She is unbearably self-centered.”

Bella wishes she had a quiet moment in which to plumb the depth of her grief alone, to give herself over to an instant of full-blown mourning before she gets a little rest and goes to catch her flight. Then she recalls how Marcella handled the loss of her husband of nearly sixty years: She slept. Bella has never known anyone who slept off her grief, but Marcella fell into a massive depression and slept and slept — not once leaving her bedroom for a whole month, during which time she remained utterly mute. At the end of what a mutual friend would later describe as Marcella’s “mourning hibernation,” the woman reemerged, and she seemed to think that the world around her was good again. And if you mentioned her husband’s name, Marcella would speak of him as though he were out for a brief walk and would be back shortly.

Bella has no such luxury; she doesn’t have a whole month in which to mourn. She has a nephew and niece to look after.