Nadifa Mohamed - The Orchard of Lost Souls

Filsan walks down the convoy, and here the soldiers don’t stare at her or smile like the barely trained police; they show her the respect due another soldier. Her life has always revolved around these men, from her father down to her political science teachers at Halane College; it is their judgement that carries weight with her and she still feels small in their estimation. Filsan has volunteered to come north, hoping to show that although a woman, she has more commitment to the revolution than any of her male peers. This is the coalface of internal security, where real work can be done defeating National Freedom Movement bandits who persist in nipping at the government’s tail. As she looks around her, she realises it is not inconceivable that members of the banned group are here now, filtering anonymously through the gates between the mothers in robes and uniformed schoolchildren. It is impossible to tell enemy from friend.

It was a hard way to earn a new pair of shoes but for Deqo it was worth it. A month of dance lessons has taught her the Hilgo, Belwo, Dudi and the overly complicated Halawalaq. She isn’t a bad dancer but is better at improvisation than following the steps, and even now she turns left instead of right or jumps forward instead of back. They still haven’t seen the shoes but that’s all Toothless Milgo has talked about during the lessons. They have earned those shoes with sweat and tears and Deqo intends to wear them like a soldier wears his medals.

Think of the shoes. Don’t you want the shoes? Do you want to be barefoot forever? Concentrate then!’ A sharp swipe over their feet with an acacia twig.

They have learnt to dance to the beat of Milgo’s rough palm against the bottom of a plastic basin, but at the parade there will be real drums, trumpets, guitars, everything. They will be dancing in front of thousands, even the governor of the whole region will be watching, so they have to practise, practise, practise.

Now the day of the parade has finally arrived. Before dawn the troupe of five girls and five boys, all from the orphanage, are herded into the yard behind the camp’s clinic and scrubbed half to death. Deqo’s eyes are tinged red from the strong-smelling soap and she keeps rubbing them to ease the itch. A truck waits by the dispensary tent and they are dressed in traditional macaweis and guntiino and then loaded into the back. The truck starts up, a plume of brown smoke bursting from its exhaust, and Deqo grabs hold of the side as they pick up speed. It is her first time in a vehicle and she is surprised to feel such a strong breeze on her face, the edges of her hair whipped about as if on a stormy day. When the truck slows, the breeze disappears again and Deqo squints against the rising grit and clamps her lips together.

While the other children practise the songs they will sing at the parade, Deqo’s attention is drawn back towards the refugee camp, the semi-circular wooden aqals suddenly nothing more than speckles on the surface of the earth. The grain warehouse and various clinics constantly surrounded by milling refugees are invisible from here; the arguments, the bitterness, the sadness far away. The road snakes down towards Hargeisa, the landscape bare apart from the occasional aloe bush, animal bone and plastic shoe, the only difference from the camp being the freshness of the air. The horizon is all blue sky with just a streak of yellow leading them forward, and it is difficult to imagine anything of substance ahead. Deqo half-expects the truck to reach that yellow streak and then tumble over the edge of the earth, but instead it carries on the badly tarred road until it reaches the first military checkpoint outside the city.

Kawsar and her neighbours squeeze into the second stand; the stadium was made for three thousand spectators but today it is crammed with more than ten thousand. Corpulent women push along the narrow walkway, busy with their own conversations, stepping on Kawsar’s toes and using her arm for support without so much as a glance in her direction. The temperature is still cool but will rise steadily until they feel like hides drying in the sun. Her knees are swollen and already she begins to shift her weight from one foot to the other every few minutes.

The October Twenty-first festivals are poor imitations of the Independence Day celebrations, Kawsar thinks — like a bad husband reminding his unhappy wife of the good times they once shared while knowing that they would never return. When the British had left on 26 June 1960, everyone had poured out of their homes in their Eid clothes and gathered at the municipal khayriyo between the national bank and prison. It was as if they were drunk, wild; girls got pregnant that night and when asked who the father of their child was, they would reply: ‘Ask the flag.’ That night, crushed within a mixed crowd as the Somali flag was raised for the first time, Kawsar had lost a long, gold earring that was part of her dowry, but Farah hadn’t cared — he’d said it was a gift to the new nation. The party had moved to Freedom Park and lasted into the next morning, the sleepy town transformed into a playground, the youth of the country believing that they had achieved what their elders hadn’t. People always half-joked afterwards that that day changed the women of Hargeisa; that they never returned to the modest, quiet lives they had known after that bacchanalian display, that the taste of one kind of freedom led to an insatiable desire for every kind.

A flutter in her womb distracts Kawsar from the marching band tuning up near her. It is a sensation that comes regularly now, like fingernails brushing the inside of her skin, a heartbeat pulsing deep in the sea of her. Maryam’s daughter is fussing already her chubby hands pulling at her mother’s hair as she attempts to wriggle out of the sling. Maryam slaps the child’s thigh to make her settle but it just infuriates her more. What an easy stage that was: when a child’s only want was to walk around a little before collapsing back into your arms. Hodan had slept nestled against Kawsar’s shoulder on days like this, when the people had still been gullible enough to celebrate the regime with real emotion, when the shine of independence had made everything magical — our first Somali textbooks, our first airline, everything a wonder. It was the star that caused all the grief: that five-pointed star on the flag, with each point signifying a part of the Somali motherland, had led the country into war with Kenya and then Ethiopia, had fed a ruinous desire to reclaim territory that was long gone. The last defeat changed everything. After seventy-nine the guns that were turned outward reversed position and became trained on Somalis instead, the fury of humiliated men blowing back over the Haud Desert.

Filsan hates the squatness of Hargeisa. In Mogadishu the buildings soar and blind the eye with their whiteness; here everything clings to the earth, cowering and subservient, the cheap mud brick bungalows often left unpainted as if the town is inhabited by giant termites that cobble their dwellings together with dirt and spit. In Mogadishu the oldest residences are made of coral and have delicate wooden latticework and vaulted ceilings that give people a sense of wonder. In the centre of the city where the alleys narrow at points to the width of a man’s shoulder blades, you can walk as if in a dream, never certain of what might appear after the next bend: a bare-chested man with a silver swordfish slung over his thin black back, a shoal of children reciting Qu’ran from their wooden slates, a girl milking a white, lyre-horned cow. The place has enchantment, mystery, it moves backward and forward in time with every turn of the feet; it is fitting that it lies beside an ocean over which its soul can breathe, rather than being hemmed in by mountains like a jinn in a bottle.