Nadifa Mohamed - The Orchard of Lost Souls

Officer Adan Ali tugs at her collar and brushes a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘It was reported that you tried to assault members of the Guddi. What do you have to say in reply to this accusation?’

‘I neither raised my hand to anyone nor threatened to,’ Kawsar explains.

‘Are you saying the Guddi are lying?’

Kawsar hesitates and takes a deep breath. ‘Yes.’

Violent writing into the notebook. ‘You understand that defamation of public workers is an offence?’

‘An offence to God? To you? To me?’

‘To the country.’

Kawsar shrugs her contempt.

Officer Adan Ali slams the pen onto the table and throws her back against her chair; another petulant little girl in authority.

Filsan feels her leg jiggling underneath the table; it is a nervous habit that appears when she is about to lose her temper. This is her first ever interrogation; she had walked into the police station and demanded to see the old woman. The nightshirt guards were already red-eyed and bleary and let her in without much discussion. She had wanted to clear her head, focus on work rather than what had just happened in Haaruun’s car. Deep down she is terrified of returning alone to her little room. This old woman, Kawsar, has not only cleared her mind but is kindling a fire of anger in it; she thinks she is a gangster or something, refusing to look at Filsan and shrugging nonchalantly at questions.

Filsan has forgotten a standard question and she asks it now. ‘Do you have any children?’

‘Not anymore.’

Filsan’s suspicion grows; if the mother is this disrespectful, maybe she has sons amongst the rebels in Ethiopia or in the Gulf, sending them money. ‘When did they leave the country?’

Kawsar sighs. ‘About five years ago.’

‘Where did they go?’

‘Heaven.’

Another pause.

‘Do you think this is a game? If I want to I can make you disappear into Mandera or prisons that you have never heard of, where no one will find you.’

Filsan wants to take a hammer to her face. For some reason people feel they don’t need to respect her. ‘I am going to give you one last chance: tell me what happened between you and the Guddi .’

Kawsar spreads her hands on the table, her wrists just bone and bulging veins; the fingers curve as if the knuckles need oiling, the henna on her nails half grown out leaving small harvest moons at the tips.

‘I went to the stadium as instructed. I sat quietly with my neighbours watching the parade. I am old, I am tired, I have no energy for these all day events but I obeyed. I saw a scrap of a girl dancing in the stadium until she was dragged away by the Guddi .’

‘That is when you intervened?’ Filsan’s heart rate slows down.

‘Yes. They were thrashing her, four or five of them against a child. I didn’t want to just watch.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I approached and told them to stop. I didn’t touch anyone but I was pushed more than once.’

‘What happened to the girl after you flew to her rescue?’

‘She ran away.’

‘Is this your first conflict with public officials?’

‘I was once fined.’

‘Why?’

‘I was wrongly accused.’

‘What of?’ snaps Filsan.

‘Listening to NFM radio,’ murmurs Kawsar.

‘Are any of your family mixed up with the rebels?’

‘I don’t have family. I am alone.’

‘So why is a woman of your age tuning into childish propaganda?’

‘I wasn’t, but even if I did, aren’t these my own ears? Given by God to do with as I please?’ Kawsar’s hand flicks her right ear lobe.

The blows come one after the other. The first to her ear as loud as a wave hitting a rock, then to her temple, cheek, neck. For a moment they stop as Kawsar clutches Officer Adan Ali’s hands in hers but after a few heartbeats they resume. A swirl of sound and sight engulfs her until a punch to the chest knocks her from the chair onto the cement floor. Landing on her hip, Kawsar hears a crack beneath her and then feels a river of pain swelling up from her stomach to her throat, obstructing her breath. Resting her weight on one hand, she lifts an open palm to the soldier. ‘Please stop!’ she cries.

The girl shakes her head, tears in her own eyes, and rushes out of the room. The thud of her boots as she runs down the corridor gets quieter and disappears.

Every millimetre of movement electrifies Kawsar’s nerves. She can neither pick herself up nor lie flat on the ground but is fixed in an awkward, lop-sided pose. Her head sways with the enormity of the pain pulsing through her body, bile at the back of her tongue. Even if someone did arrive to help, how could she let them move her? It would be better to take a bullet to the back of the head. Her palms are clammy and she loses her grip, slipping closer to the ground, where drops of blood stain the white concrete. Kawsar licks her upper lip and tastes more blood. She rubs a hand under her nose; it comes away red.

The door is flung open and the policewoman with the blonde highlights and a man gather around her.

‘What the hell did you say?’ the policewoman asks, leaning over Kawsar’s face.

‘Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! I beg you,’ Kawsar sobs.

The policewoman hooks her under the arms while the policeman grabs her ankles.

‘My hip is broken. In the name of God, put me down, I beg you, put me down. .’ Her words become screams as they lift her into the air.

They shuffle out of the interrogation room and a curtain of black descends over Kawsar’s eyes, all feeling and hearing fading away.

Hidden in a narrow alleyway, Deqo peeps out at the crowd that has gathered outside the police station. Around ten women in red robes shout at a policeman, more policemen arrive and the women retreat but continue to shout. ‘Give her to us,’ she hears one say.

A civilian car drives past and one woman jumps out in front of it, banging on the windscreen until it stops and the driver steps out to speak with her. Behind them the shouting ceases as a prostrate figure emerges on a stretcher between two young policemen.

Deqo tiptoes out into the street, the area suddenly bright as cars slow to observe the commotion, their headlights revealing the face of the woman on the stretcher.

It is her.

Deqo rushes across the road. Nobody seems to see her; this is a trick she has, the power to become invisible. She wipes the blood away from her saviour’s face and pats her cheek. The women are shouting over her head, one older woman threatening the police with a cane; two of them take hold of the stretcher and push it into the open doors of the waiting car.

The car doors slam before Deqo can slip inside with them. A squeak, a crunch and the car starts, throwing up a plume of dust into her face. She chases its lights through the darkness, a pair of eyes looking back at her through the rear window. Deqo looks down at her garments glowing ghostly white and her limbs paled to the same colour. She realises how far away Saba’ad is, how exciting her life has become in the few hours she has been in Hargeisa, and she knows she cannot go back. The car begins to pull away from her and she quickens her pace, her legs eating up the road; the car turns and she follows, her feet now numb. Another acceleration and Deqo strains to keep up, her heart banging against her ribs. Her eyes focussed on the lights ahead, she misses the large pothole right ahead of her and falls in, scraping her knee and collapsing into it. The car slows to turn another corner and then disappears. Deqo is alone once more.

Deqo steps barefoot across the festering mulch that slides beneath her feet. Her red plastic thong sandals hang delicately from her fingers, and beads of water drip from the trees as if the branches are shaking their fingers dry, splashing her face and neck in mischief. She hides behind the wide trunk of a willow near two crouched figures, her face framed in a scorched cleft where lightning has flung itself in a careless fit. She whispers her name to give herself courage. The men’s talk is distorted by the music of raindrops falling over thousands of trees in the ditch, their leaves held out like waxy green tongues. The drought that had tormented her in Saba’ad is over, but she is in no mood to enjoy the downpour.