Nadifa Mohamed - The Orchard of Lost Souls

‘Take a seat, eddo ,’ an inmate breast-feeding a child calls out.

Kawsar hesitates. It is clear from the woman’s jaundiced eyes and gaudy dress that she is a prostitute. The woman shifts over on her mat and pats the floor.

‘What’s a lady like you doing in a place like this?’

‘I couldn’t take any more of them, I realised.’ Kawsar crouches down slowly onto the woven straw mat.

‘What did you do?’ she prods, teasing her nipple back into the baby’s mouth.

Kawsar shrugs. ‘What can I do? I just told the Guddi to stop beating a child.’

‘Those bastards. You were lucky they didn’t beat you. Look here,’ she points to the infant’s temple, ‘see that dent? It’s where a policeman’s stick caught him during a raid. No apology, no nothing.’

Kawsar strokes the fine, smooth skin of the boy’s forehead. Before he has even reached his first birthday he has been marked by the violent world surrounding him; perhaps he will be unable to see or hear or walk in the future and that won’t matter to anyone but this drunk, sloppy mother feeding him her poison through her milk. ‘He’s beautiful,’ she says.

‘He should be, his father was very handsome, a real Ilmi Boodari.’

Kawsar smiles. ‘You look too young to know anything about Ilmi Boodari.’

‘He died the year I was born.’

‘Of love. .’

‘Of course, of love! He was the most romantic Somali man to ever live or write poetry, but no one knows his songs better than me. I have each and every one on tape.’

An addict of love as well as drink, thinks Kawsar. That makes sense, from one high to another.

‘What is your name?’

‘People call me China.’

A laugh escapes from Kawsar. ‘Why? Are you a coolie? Do you build roads in your spare time?’

‘No, but I help the men who do.’ China meets her gaze and raises an eyebrow flirtatiously.

Kawsar imagines the baby in a drawer under the bed while coolies with dirty hands climb into bed with his mother.

‘Don’t look so pious. When it’s not the coolies it’s probably your husband or son.’

Kawsar rises from the mat feeling small and vulnerable.

‘Go! Go to hell! It was my mistake to show you any kindness. Go and sit over there on the cold floor,’ China bellows, pushing her away.

Kawsar walks to the opposite wall where the smell of the waste bucket has cleared a circular space. Her breath is shallow and pained. She knows women like China always carry a weapon.

‘Please, Dahabo, come quickly, get me out of here,’ she prays. Whatever rush she had got from standing up to the Guddi has now evaporated. She wants nothing more than a cup of strong tea and to be back in her clean, safe home.

Deqo skids to a stop. Ahead of her is the woman who had come to her rescue in the stadium, climbing down from one of the jeeps that had overtaken her. She had looked so tall and brave when she confronted Milgo, but now the soldiers tower over her. She follows behind a female soldier, up the concrete steps, her knees seeming to buckle on the fourth step before she regains her balance and enters the building. Deqo crosses the road and stares up from the bottom of the stairs. The fragrant incense on the woman’s clothes is powerful and sweet and Deqo inhales deeply, imagining the home this smell comes from — it will have pots bubbling on the stove, clothes drying on a line in the sun and a bed piled high with pillows and soft blankets. A full stomach and a good night’s sleep were necessary to make people kind, Milgo said, when she went too far with the hidings.

Deqo decides to wait in the shade across the road until the gentle lady returns to thank her; it had been rude just to run away like that and leave her in trouble. Maybe she hasn’t got children and would let her live with her, she has seen that happen before — women arrived at the hospital, browsed the cots and took a baby home. Deqo could cook, clean, run errands; she was better for an old woman than a whining baby.

A few people emerge from the wide, dark entrance of the jail but not whom Deqo wants. They come out shielding their eyes from the light, their clothes crumpled and stained, but Deqo feels certain that her woman is unsulliable; she will smell as good on her release as she did when she went in.

A reverberation emanates from the direction of the bridge she has just crossed. Deqo takes a few steps towards it and watches a group of women, all dressed like her saviour, come slowly into view, a wave of red, white and brown crashing over the road, singing out in praise of the President and Somalia as they wave branches in the air. They march in rows of ten, some in the road, some clambering onto the pavement, an army of housewives invading the silence. Deqo ducks into an alleyway in case Milgo appears alongside them.

A Somali film crew run past. With their lumbering cameras, bags and microphones, they remind her of the foreign photographers who descended on Saba’ad during the cholera outbreak, stepping on people’s fingers and shoving cameras into their faces as they died silently on the ground. They had seemed friendly until they began to work, dominating the clinic as they littered it with cables, generators and so many different machines. They had filmed Old Sulaiman crying over his dead family, all four children and his wife wrapped in thin sheets ready for burial, his tears coursing down into his beard, their cameras less than a step away. He had survived but left the camp, not even a bundle on his back, abandoning his possessions for his neighbours to pick over. Some people said he went back to the Ogaden, others into the city, but he was never seen again.

The marchers wave their placards and shake their branches until the flow peters out, leaves and twigs are stomped into the tarmac in their wake. They take the life in the street with them and leave her with images of corpses lined up for burial outside of the clinic walls, the smell of them clinging to her skin like oil.

The stadium events are finally over and the dignitaries rise as the national anthem is played over the speakers. Filsan stands in a phalanx of soldiers just beneath General Haaruun. With the Guddi units safely despatched she has eased her way to the dais. There are two other female officers nearby but she is the closest, and she casts a competitive glance at them, hoping that the General will notice the sharpness of her uniform, the straightness of her back, the smartness of her salute. She has not eaten all day and her eyes are turning scenes into dreamscapes: spectral figures waving to her from the edge of her vision, the stands undulating with hands at their tips like surf, fires burning wherever the sun hits metal. A tap on her shoulder makes her jolt as the final strains of the anthem float away.

‘His Excellency wants you to be introduced to him.’ A sergeant with a star on each epaulette speaks in her ear.

‘Huh?’ She has waited for this moment for so long and that is all Filsan can say.

‘Quick, he is waiting.’ The sergeant turns his back and clicks his fingers for her to follow.

She rushes around the barrier and up the steps. Large electric fans stir the blue and white silken sheets covering the dais, and she feels like she is standing on a cloud as the wind pushes it across the sky.

Filsan dabs the sweat discreetly from her hairline and salutes General Haaruun.

‘At ease, soldier.’ His voice is smooth, soft, so comfortable in his power that he doesn’t need to bark it. ‘I always like to meet female comrades, encourage them in their career. What is your name?’

‘Adan Ali, Filsan, sir.’ She can’t look at him.

‘Which agency are you in?’

‘Internal Security, sir.’

‘Look up, comrade.’