Nuruddin Farah - Hiding in Plain Sight

The journalist pointed out that Somalis, whether male or female, are physically reserved. “They are undemonstrative. It is as if they have never heard of sexual freedom, with parents shying away from standing even half nude in front of their children. The body, whether female or male, is in chains.”

Given the opportunity, and unlimited funding, the journalist asks, what photographic project would she be eager to embark on?

Bella smiled and shook her head. “I wonder if there is any point in answering your question, which I take to be nothing but a sort of a trap.”

“Let me ask it in a different way,” said the journalist. “Who would you rather be, a Sebastião Salgado or a Robert Mapplethorpe, given the chance?”

“A Sebastião Salgado any day.”

“Why?”

“Because I would start my own series about the end of women’s manual labor,” Bella replied.

The truth is, Bella did photograph her lovers in the nude before she was intimate with them, but she will never discuss this. She believes this affirms her power over them. As she prepares them to sit for her, she watches them from behind the camera lens, intently waiting and deliberately making them nervous before her finger presses the shutter.

Nor does she share with her interviewer the shock and then the amusement she experienced when, in a hotel in New York where she was staying, she found a Mapplethorpe book of black male portraits in the nude where a Gideon Bible would normally be. Did she like what she saw? Did she think that what she saw was art? She wasn’t sure. Of course, she wouldn’t deny there was novelty in doing what Mapplethorpe did, and she admired the way he’d made his own niche, in both the market and the art of photography. But she wasn’t so sure that what he was doing was any different from the titillating nude photographs so many photographers had taken of so many women.

“Who in your experience is the most difficult subject to photograph?” the journalist had asked.

“The eye of the camera sees what is in front of it, and it records the moment it captures truthfully,” Bella replied. “However, it may have difficulties in fronting impossible situations. My mother hated being photographed despite knowing that there was nothing more pleasing to me than taking her picture. So I would say she was the most impossible subject to photograph.”

“And who is the most delightful subject to photograph?” the journalist asked.

That one was easy. “Aar, my brother, and his children,” Bella had answered.

Bella knows that she is procrastinating, but she does not yet feel up to the enormous responsibilities that await her. She tells herself that until she has a better grip on her emotions she shouldn’t make contact with her niece and nephew. The folly of mourning, and thus confusing love with loss, is so natural in us humans that it can leave us physically and mentally unable to perform any of our usual tasks, let alone look after anyone else.

She pulls her mobile phone out of her shoulder bag to ring Gunilla again. But she has scarcely dialed the long international number when the hotel phone on the bedside table rings, startling her. With her hand shaking and her head spinning with an array of conflicting fantasies — someone is ringing to tell her that Aar is injured but still alive; or it is Gunilla calling to tell her that Valerie has been released and is on a flight bound for Nairobi? — she finally finds the strength and the voice to pick up and say hello.

The hotel receptionist informs her that she is sending up a fax message that has arrived marked VERY URGENT. And because the woman gives neither the sender’s name nor the country of origin, Bella again allows her mind to go wild, imagining all sorts of far-fetched scenarios. Perhaps the fax brings news that her niece and nephew have been in a car accident on their way from their boarding school on the outskirts of Nairobi. Bella sits down, her lips silently unleashing a salvo of Koranic verses she hasn’t recited since childhood. The next minute her optimism is ascendant, the fax bringing a different kind of news about Aar: that his body was found in perfect condition, proof that he did not suffer much pain or trauma. She stands by the entrance to her room, ready to open the door to the bearer of the message. When she hears the lift doors open and then footsteps approach, she gives in to her eagerness and opens the door. But there is no one in the corridor. So she sits tight and waits, accepting her powerlessness to do anything about anything.

Bella tells herself that she has lived for years in a cocoon. With no child of her own and no steady partner, she hasn’t had many worries to bother her. Healthy, young, and blessed with good looks, content with the professional niche she has made for herself, she has had few serious worries, at least until Aar’s transfer two years ago to the UN office in Mogadiscio. From that day on, she paid more attention to the news coming out of Somalia. Even so, she was unmoved by much of what she read, even the suicide bombings and the constant deaths from IEDs planted by the terrorists. As long as the casualties were unknown to her personally, the tragedies felt abstract. Until now! As she said to Marcella — was it yesterday or the day before? — “Aar’s death changes everything.” What she meant was this: From now on, when the telephone rings in the middle of the night, she will imagine a car accident, a bombing in a shopping mall or restaurant in which someone dear to her loses their life. And while she will no longer worry herself to death about Aar, she will dread what might happen to her nephew and niece, the same way many a parent she knows has an ear cocked for a phone call when her teenagers are out at a party after midnight.

Bella is just at the point of wondering if she might have misunderstood the receptionist when she hears a gentle knock on the door. Now she takes her time before answering, searching for a little baksheesh, but she has found only euros when there is a second tapping and then a third. She opens the door and finds herself face-to-face with a handsome young man with big eyes and a fetching smile, in hotel uniform. Extending her right hand to receive the envelope he bears, she sees that it is shaking and stops. But the young man has no eyes for her trembling hand; he is ogling the slight opening where her robe has slipped a little. Suddenly amused, Bella relaxes and, no longer shaking, receives the envelope with both hands and thanks him.

“Why has it taken you so long to come up?” she asks him. “I’d almost given up.”

“The receptionist twice sent me to the wrong room,” he replies, shaking his head and smiling. “Maybe she was confused because your name is hyphenated on the fax, but you registered with only a single name.” But he apologizes and she gives him a couple of euros for his troubles before she gently closes the door.

Her hand is trembling again as she takes a seat, her feet planted on the floor. Bizarrely, she looks left and then right, as if she expects someone else to be with her in the room or as if she were engaged in a conversation. Then she nods her head, as though giving an okay, and tears the envelope open and reads the name of the sender: Helene, in Kampala. But Bella knows no Helene in Kampala. The message is in legalese and brief. Helene introduces herself as an attorney who is writing at the suggestion of Gunilla, who provided her with the name of Bella’s hotel. She continues, “Since the matter I wish to discuss with you is of utmost urgency and its nature delicate and familial, I would appreciate it if you could contact me at your earliest.” Helene provides two office landline numbers and a mobile phone number, each bearing a Kampala area code, and an e-mail address.