Nadifa Mohamed - The Orchard of Lost Souls

‘Is that your grandmother?’ Filsan whispers.

‘Yes. I am looking after her. Who are you?’

‘Filsan.’

‘Why were they chasing you?’

‘Because I used to be one of them.’

‘And now?’

‘I am one of you.’

Kawsar stirs while Filsan is in the bathroom. She mutters indistinct words and moans before opening her eyes. Deqo stands impatiently beside her, waiting for the moment to tell her about the stranger.

‘What’s the matter?’

Deqo checks over her shoulder. ‘I brought a woman here while you were sleeping.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She used to be a soldier.’

Kawsar rises up on to her elbows and wipes her hands over her face. ‘She didn’t give you a name?’

‘Filsan.’

‘Is she alone?’

‘Yes.’

There is the sound of footsteps accompanied by the swish of a long diric trailing on the tiles. Then Filsan appears: gaunt, dishevelled, humbled but unmistakable.

Deqo looks between the women as they exchange fixed, cold stares.

‘Have you come to finish the job?’ Kawsar finally says.

Filsan raises her hands, whether in denial or surrender it is difficult to tell.

Deqo notices that Kawsar’s face has flushed a deep red and her eyes have a glassy film over them.

‘Look what you have done to me!’ She flings the blankets away to reveal her wasted legs discoloured by patches of peeling skin.

Filsan’s head bows a fraction.

‘Are you satisfied now that your friends have decided to send us all to hell?’

Deqo inches closer to Kawsar and holds her arms out as if to shield her. ‘What have you done to her?’

Filsan’s sobs are awkward, resistant, her mouth clenches to hold them in. The expression of emotion seems to cause her pain. ‘Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me,’ the words rock her.

Kawsar sets her jaw and watches without pity. ‘Only God can forgive you.’ Her voice is calm but icy. ‘Why are you here? Are they after you now?’

‘I’ve deserted.’

‘So they might follow you here?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Get out! Don’t bring more trouble than we already have.’

‘Let her stay.’ Deqo pleads, grabbing Kawsar’s hand. She turns to Filsan. ‘You can’t let her die. You owe me.’

Ashamed, Filsan approaches the bed and Kawsar flinches. ‘You cannot walk at all?’ she asks.

‘Not even one step.’

‘I always repay a debt. I will do whatever this child asks.’

Kawsar looks around her room, her tomb, and through the window to the red sky hanging over the skeletons of a familiar world. If she goes with them she will see exactly what has happened to her town, she will smell the destruction, taste it. If she stays she will only know her own end. ‘I’ll go with you.’

A wide smile brightens Deqo’s face.

Kawsar’s heart begins to pound; she wants escape, but now there is guilt at risking the little girl’s life, fear of the soldier and of what she will find outside, and a strange, strange thrill in declaring what she wants rather than what she thinks others need.

They rest in awkward silence until nightfall, and then by the light of a full moon open and share three cans of tuna from the kitchen. Their padding around in the darkness reminds Kawsar of stray cats sniffing through a larder. Her hearing is so acute that their shallow breaths, their mastication, and even the steady beat of their hearts seem deafening. It is easier to not see them; her fate rests in the hands of a scruffy urchin and a brutal, blood-stained deserter. Deqo fills all the flasks she can find with water, while Filsan stands in the middle of the room, almost catatonic. After gathering her thoughts she peers through the window and then opens the front door slightly and creeps out into the courtyard. Deqo watches through the lock and ushers Filsan in when she returns with a wheelbarrow. Stripping the bed of blankets they line the small carriage that Raage used to deliver metre-long baguettes to the local housewives. Kawsar feels soft patches of her skin ooze fluid onto the sheets as she moves closer to the edge of the mattress. ‘That’s enough blankets, I am not an egg. Come and take my arms.’

Filsan guides the wheelbarrow to the bed and then tentatively places an arm around Kawsar’s back. Her touch doesn’t feel as distasteful as Kawsar thought it would; it is just a hand, neither evil nor good in itself, but strong as she steers her into the wheelbarrow.

Deqo covers her with the last of the blankets and puts the flasks in the small spaces left beside her.

‘Lift the mattress and take out the box underneath.’

Filsan puts the wooden chest on the floor and then lets the mattress drop down. It contains the money Kawsar has saved since Hodan died — the rents she collected from the houses Farah had built, and the small police pension she had inherited should have been a sizeable amount, but their value has plummeted along with that of the Somali shilling.

‘Give it to me.’ Kawsar clutches the box to her breasts and remembers that the key is hidden inside the frame of the tapestry on the wall. She points to it and Deqo unhooks it from the nail, the key falling to the floor.

‘Have you got it?’

‘Yes!’ Deqo leaps up triumphantly and drops it into Kawsar’s palm.

‘Take warm clothes from the wardrobe.’ Kawsar feels awkward and foolish ordering them around from this idiotic throne, but tries to keep her voice authoritative.

‘No, we don’t want to be overburdened.’ Filsan speaks softly but there is an edge to her voice.

‘Just take a jumper, then,’ insists Kawsar, jabbing a finger at the wardrobe.

Deqo obeys Kawsar’s instruction and piles on warm clothes, knowing just how cold a night in the desert can be.

Filsan grasps the handles and tilts the wheelbarrow up. ‘How is that?’

Kawsar grips the sides, afraid that she is about to be tipped out, but holds her nerve. ‘It’s fine, let’s take our chance.’

With Deqo guiding the front and Filsan shoving from behind, Kawsar finally leaves the bungalow. She resembles a lizard that has crawled out of its burrow: scale-skinned, slit-eyed, ignorant of what it might find. After the concrete yard they sink into the deep sand of October Road, into a pale white moonscape that seems surreal yet familiar. Kawsar turns to her bungalow and bids a bittersweet farewell to the grief-blue walls.

They move slowly, as if through water, Filsan pushing with her whole body and stumbling repeatedly Kawsar huddles under the blanket and tries to piece together the broken shards of the shattered neighbourhood into something she recognises. Raage’s exceptionally tidy little shop has been ransacked; Maryam’s goat pants half-dead on its side; Umar Farey’s hotel has received an intense barrage of mortars, its green windows mostly splintered and blackened; the cassettes from the video hall have been smashed and tape flutters in the trees like mourning banners; a fire smoulders on Fadumo’s roof. Deqo pulls the wheelbarrow to the left, away from the three bodies lying on their stomachs. Kawsar puts her hand to her eyes to avoid the sight but feels drawn to look, recognising Maryam and two of her children from the gaps between her fingers. Neither Deqo nor Filsan look in their direction. Kawsar says a prayer for the family, ashamed that she cannot even stop to bury them. Maryam with her alligator bag full of medicines deserved more than this country had given her and her children. It has now reduced them to hide and meat for the vultures to pick over. Kawsar is humiliated by the sight of them. Nothing she believed in matters anymore: religion, tradition, civilisation has been swept away. Hodan was right to have gone when she did.

Apart from desultory gunfire and the far-away rattle of trucks crossing Hargeisa Bridge, it appears as if the soldiers and rebels have exhausted each other. The first orgy of violence has been enacted; now it is time for bodies to be buried, wounds to be attended to, sleep to be caught up on. The moonlight is so bright that Kawsar can see to the end of the street where short, velvety shadows huddle beneath the bushes like jinns . The tanks, the planes, helicopters, armoured vehicles and cannons have been put to bed and the few songbirds that haven’t fled begin to trill, calling out disoriented, despondent songs to one another for comfort. They will have to be the poets recording what happened here, indignation puffing their chests and opening their throats wide, the sorrowful notes catching in the trees and falling, if life returns, like dust over heads that would rather forget.