Nadifa Mohamed - The Orchard of Lost Souls

The Guddi marching band in indigo tunics and white caps stand beside her, old men tuning their old instruments. What they lack in ability they make up for in their willingness to please; they will squawk and stomp until they are told to stop. The musicians in Hargeisa are amateurs; those who couldn’t make it in Mogadishu ply their trade here, in the solitary theatre or in the daytime weddings that take place in bungalows. It needs a real city to pound new rhythms out of life — the tick of the town hall clock, the scrape of a shovel, the whistle of a traffic policeman — it needs all of this for new, pulse-quickening styles to germinate and flower.

The foreign dignitaries step out from their motorcade on schedule, and Filsan recognises a couple from photographs printed in the October Star, the national paper. The US economic attaché leads the group, followed by the Egyptian ambassador and a man in flowing white robes and keffiyah. Maybe a dozen other officials line up along the blue and white dais to await the General.

The honk of car horns announces his arrival. A soldier clumsily spreads a threadbare red carpet from the gate to the dais, and then General Haaruun steps out of a black Mercedes. It is as if an electric current passes through the stands as he walks to his seat surrounded by bodyguards, the atmosphere tense, every sound magnified by the sudden, jagged stillness. Filsan turns quickly to monitor the situation behind her: the locals do not shout or throw missiles but their eyes are fixed on the tall, gaunt man in military dress. They crane forward in their seats and appear like an avalanche of bodies ready to fall onto her and bury the stadium beneath them.

At the sight of General Haaruun, Kawsar’s heart pounds in her chest. He is like a hyena — sparse, menacing, his very presence seeming to herald death. She blames him not just for Hodan’s passing but for her arrest, her disappearance and her decline into a huddled, diminished figure. Despite the crowd, Kawsar feels a wall of black grief descending on her, leaving her blind and deaf and voiceless as if she is at the bottom of a well, only ever able to climb halfway up before losing her grip yet again.

‘Stay with us.’ Dahabo pats Kawsar’s hand and through her numb skin she feels her warmth.

‘When is this accursed thing going to start?’ Kawsar pretends to return to events around her but her mind is still in that well.

‘Now! Look!’

Three MIG aircraft in arrow formation buzz overhead, as grey and long-necked as vultures, swooping over as if racing to a corpse somewhere, the six streaks of smoke behind them fattening out and then tearing apart. The dignitaries stand to attention; they are vultures of a different level, more like marabous in their finery, roosting with full stomachs for the moment, the eyes behind the dark glasses are always alert and watchful.

It is only Dahabo who touches Kawsar now. Every month or so they meet in Kawsar’s house for tea and lamentation, and Dahabo makes a point of resting a hand on Kawsar’s thigh as she speaks, as if she knows how chilling it is to live alone without any human sound or touch. Dahabo squeezes, kneads, pats according to the topic of conversation, but her hand is never far away; it is a hard, calloused hand with nails bitten down low, but it comforts, transfuses more than just heat. That is another thing about getting old, the constant need for heat. Kawsar’s bones ache for sunlight, and she has taken to sitting out for an hour most days just after the worst of the midday sun and basking in her orchard like a lizard. But her sense of distance and loneliness is not shifting today, despite the warmth of the sun scaling up the sky and the proximity of so many bodies all around her.

The large speakers garble announcements, but it’s not necessary because the sequence of the parade is well established already. Soldiers come first, their legs snicking like scissors, then the heavy, older policemen and women in their blue uniforms, then civilians in their work clothes — teachers, civil servants, students. The only enjoyable thing for Kawsar is sporting her neighbours and their children amongst the marchers, their blind eyes and lunatic grins as they strain to search out family members from the identical figures in the stands. The Guddi come last, waving branches and carrying images of Lenin, Kim Il Jung and Mao, the communists who once provided inspiration to the dictatorship but whose pictures have faded, carted out just once a year like church relics. The regime now seeks out friends of any description, be they Arab, American or Albanian.

On the way into the stadium Deqo has seen tatty-looking girls her own age gathered in the market, sweeping with short brooms made from dried grasses. Even as poor as they are, each has a pair of plastic jelly sandals on her feet.

Now she watches from behind Milgo’s legs as the soldiers begin their parade. They march as one, a tribe of insects with green shells on their heads, their thousand feet scuttling across the dirt, their thousand eyes pointing in the same direction. She has never seen so many men in one place; the camp is mostly women and children, all squabbling and fighting with each other. The soldiers are young, powerful and unified. They seem to belong to each other while she belongs to no one. Milgo ululates as the men pass beside them and Deqo tries to emulate her, swinging her tongue in her mouth and yodelling. She decides, as she looks at the soldiers, at the crowd, at the aeroplanes above, that this is the best day of her life, the day when everything in the world is laid out for her to see and enjoy. No more of the camp and its dust and flies. She feels her stomach fluttering with excitement; soon she will be out there to take her place at the centre of the earth.

In the stand opposite Kawsar there is a sudden shifting, an exhalation from thousands of lungs as the spectators bend down and arise with placards in their hands. At the instruction of Guddi activists in traditional dress these placards are turned over and held up. Within a few seconds the stand has disappeared and a shimmering portrait of Oodweyne faces Kawsar. A few rebels refuse to hold up their placards, making tiny little holes in his face, but the message is clear: the President is a giant, a god who watches over them, who can dissolve into pieces and hear and see all that they do. The young nomadic boy who knew how to hobble a camel and ease a tick out of a sheep’s flesh has become a deity. A blasphemer, thinks Kawsar as his face floats up at her, both he and his servant Haaruun. Before she remembers where she is, she spits violently at the sight, drawing a gasp from the spectators around her.

‘What are you doing?’ Dahabo exclaims, squeezing Kawsar’s upper arm tightly.

Kawsar doesn’t know, she isn’t really there; she just saw a face that disgusted her and reacted. The expressions in the aisle below reflect shock and fear that she has drawn attention to them, but Kawsar cannot comprehend that fear anymore, it seems so paltry and pointless in comparison to what she has lived through. What more can they hold to ransom when they have taken away her only child? It is fear that makes the soldiers brave, that emboldens the policemen to loot, that gives life to that old man in Mogadishu. She does not care enough about her life or possessions to keep abasing herself.

‘Now! Let’s go, let’s go!’ shouts Milgo.

The children stream out onto the ground, Deqo third in line. Sound explodes from every corner: drums, shouts, roars. Deqo can’t hear her own voice as she sings. Already, the whole routine has left her mind. She follows Safiya’s movements but her limbs are heavy, her mind swimming. She knew these dances, was better at them than Safiya, but now she is lost. Crushed by the expectation to not make a mistake, she now longs for the invisibility she had in the camp but cannot avoid the eyes watching and judging her. She is suffocated by the dust beaten up by the shield-and-spear dancers which still hangs in the air, and the discordant band music unsettles her even further. This wasn’t how it was meant to be.