Nuruddin Farah - Hiding in Plain Sight

At the reception desk, she identifies herself to the concierge, alerting him that she will be ready to join the driver of the limousine soon. Then she cashes more euros, and with the key to her room safely in her bag, she goes out to meet the limousine. The driver turns out to be a very pleasant elderly man from Eldoret. Bella insists that he tell her the route he plans to take to get to the Kariukis’ home before she gets into the vehicle. She compares the options he gives to the directions Mr. Kariuki has sent her, and when she is satisfied that he knows the route, she climbs into the back and settles in for the ride, anticipating the meeting with Salif and Dahaba with equal parts of joy and dread.

—

Traveling through the city in the back of the limousine, Bella feels almost in her element again. In recent years, her most obvious link to the African continent has been her brother and his children. Yet she is often happiest here. She feels connected to the soul of the continent, even though she knows that, almost to a man or a woman, any African would say that she is not of them. Playing the music of Baaba Maal, Cesária Évora, Toumani Diabaté, or Miriam Makeba calms her nerves and transports her to a world beyond memory, where sadness cannot reach her.

She is most conflicted when it comes to Somalia, her natal country, where bloodthirsty “nativists” claiming ancestral ownership of the land on which the city of Mogadiscio was sited ten thousand years ago have made the city ungovernable. According to what Aar told her when they spoke on the phone or met, the city had lost its charm under the repeated incursions of the clan-based militiamen recruited from communities in south-central Somalia. Then Ethiopia took it, at the behest of the U.S. And then came Shabaab.

It is the emphasis on what passes for clan, ethnic, or religious identity that makes her lose hope for the place. Just because she is a bit light-skinned and has a father from elsewhere is not reason enough to deny her the Somali identity to which she has legal and natal rights. That kind of nativist backward thinking reminds her of the American “birthers” who question Obama’s right to be the president of the United States. For that matter, it reminds her of how some Zambians challenged Kenneth Kaunda’s right to be the country’s first president even after he’d been in power for twenty-six years because he’d been born, they claimed, a kilometer over the border with Malawi.

She hopes that her luck will hold and that she will not find Salif and Dahaba in worse shape than she has been. At the very thought, her eyes fill with tears again, her chest heaving. She pulls out a towelette, the type airlines supply their passengers with before serving meals. She doesn’t want Salif and Dahaba to see her disconsolate. Or at least she doesn’t want to be the one to lead off the wailing.

And then she finds it startling to be staring into the vehicle’s side mirror. Mirrors have always had an immediate impact on her thinking, and seeing her face so unexpectedly reflected in it does not only surprise her but also imposes on her mind a humbling rationale: that she is alive and Aar is not. In an instant, her face, unbidden, runs with buckets of tears making their way down to her cheeks and staining her power suit. And her hand reaches up toward her eyes that are too unhandsome to behold. But when her wandering gaze encounters the driver’s worried look in the rear mirror, a shiver having its origin deep in the seismic tremor that has occurred within her produces a brief muscle spasm. Several seconds go by before the shaking slackens and she is able to wipe away the wetness from her cheeks.

By then, she senses the car slowing down and she assumes that they have arrived at their destination. The driver, discreet as ever, does not delve into the matter in any manner or depth. Nor does he say, “We are here,” even after he has stopped at a manned boom gate, where a uniformed security guard approaches her side and asks her to fill in a form and wait. Bella pulls herself together and does as instructed and gives the clipboard back to the man, who goes into a cubicle and then emerges to tell the driver, “The principal’s house is the biggest bungalow to the left. You can’t miss it.”

A few minutes later, they stop in front of a large bungalow. Bella gathers her thoughts in silence and then tells the driver to wait here, as he will take her and two other people back to Nairobi. But before stepping out of the vehicle, she is suffused with a mixture of anxiety and foreboding, and in a momentary fit of delirium, she wonders if she has the mental strength and physical stamina to maintain her self-control and make sure she won’t lose hold of her emotions and burst into tears the moment she sets eyes on Salif and Dahaba. Eventually, a woman Bella presumes to be Catherine Kariuki opens the door and waits. Bella, unsteady on her feet, somehow makes it out of the car and moves toward the woman holding the door, and her arms open to embrace her.

—

In spite of herself, however, Bella is sniveling again the instant Catherine says, “Bella, sincere condolences for your loss and ours,” and wraps her massive body around her. Then both women let loose a torrent of damnations aimed at Aar’s murderers, at which point the mention of his name brings forth a salvo of blessings. They stand like that, two grown women, one in flat shoes and a flowery summer frock, the other in a power suit and beautifully designed Italian shoes, each repeatedly pleading with the other to please stop crying, please, neither obliging until soft steps descending the stairs behind them make them go silent.

But it is not the children; it is the dog in playful but silent pursuit of the cat. Then the dog starts to bark and Catherine shushes her, saying, “Quiet, you silly thing. It is Bella.” She fetches a toy for the cat to play with, and the two women pause in their grieving, as if attempting to recast their roles in the tragedy they are reliving. The dog disappears and then reappears, holding a leash in its teeth: She wants to go for a walk. Catherine pays no attention but the dog, as if seriously offended, barks fiercely. The cat then turns its back on the goings-on and strides into the inner part of the house. Bella waits, as if expecting that the cat might come back with something in its mouth too, maybe its bowl, to indicate its owner has forgotten to put food in it. Or maybe it will return with a dead mouse, not so much to feed its hunger but to receive a pat on the head. Meanwhile, Catherine holds the dog by the ears, pulling the leash free of its jaws and hanging it on a hook with the promise of a walk in a minute or so. Catherine says to Bella, “As you can see, I have my work cut out for me.”

Bella is not unhappy that they are talking about ordinary matters. She is glad for anything that will occupy her mind and make her forget her pain. She says, smiling, “Now dogs insist on their rights? Dogs?”

“Normally, my husband takes her out first thing, but he had a family emergency in his village and he drove off as soon as we got back,” Catherine says. “He hopes to be back in time to see you.”

“I hope it’s nothing serious,” Bella says.

“Emergencies are a daily routine in our country,” Catherine says, shaking her head. Bella knows what she’s alluding to. In a place where violence is endemic, sudden death, car accidents, family feuds over land and other matters, witchcraft killings, and other deadly rituals are not uncommon.

Catherine says, “Do you mind if I leave you in the house with Salif and Dahaba while I take this dog for a walk?”

“Where are they?” asks Bella.

“Up in their rooms, both of them,” Catherine says, “probably surfing the Net and catching up on text messaging with their friends.”