Nuruddin Farah - Hiding in Plain Sight

“Are they already up?”

“I know Dahaba is. She came down when she heard James getting ready to leave. She thought it might be you. She and I had breakfast together.”

“And Salif?”

“He said he wanted to wait and eat with you. He acts tough sometimes, but he’s actually very sensitive. Deep down, he has a big soft center — you’ll see.”

“Just like his father,” says Bella.

“Eggs and bacon and tomato ketchup, those are his morning essentials, he can’t live without them. But perhaps he’s gone back to sleep.”

“Good for young people to sleep; that’s how they grow so big these days.”

And just as Catherine gets hold of the dog’s neck to put the leash on her, Dahaba hurtles down the stairs in a precipitous headlong rush and throws herself into Bella’s arms, her head finding familiar comfort in the curve of her aunt’s neck. A tremor as quietly invasive as it is sudden runs through Bella’s body and transmits itself to Dahaba, and suddenly she is crying out in pain. As if she can’t bear the sight, Catherine slips out the door with the dog in tow; her presence now is redundant.

“I know, darling, I do know, I do,” Bella whispers.

“Why should it happen to us?”

Bella thinks, why indeed? But she doesn’t say this aloud.

Dahaba clings to Bella until at last she is calm enough for Bella to release her. But when she looks up into her aunt’s eyes, a fresh sorrow touches off a new round of weeping. Bella kisses her niece on the cheeks. Dahaba says, “We don’t have another parent.”

Bella wants to say, “I know,” but she thinks of Valerie’s impending arrival and simply says, “You have me, darling, for one. I am here, to be with you and look after you.”

“Thanks, Auntie,” says Dahaba. But Bella pushes on.

“For another, you have a living parent, your mother.”

At that, Dahaba pushes Bella away, and for the first time the two of them stand apart, Dahaba staring at Bella with a look of anger that she has insinuated Valerie into their conversation. Bella won’t pursue the topic now; now is not the time. But Dahaba isn’t quite ready to let it drop.

“Remember, Mum went on a walkabout.”

“Regardless of what she did, she is your mum.”

“We don’t wish to see her,” says Dahaba.

“She loves you, in her own way,” Bella insists gently, remembering that Dahaba was especially close to Valerie at the time when she abandoned them.

“She called here last night,” Dahaba says. “But Salif wouldn’t talk to her.”

“What about you? Did you speak to her?”

“He hung up on her before I got the chance.”

“When did she call?”

“Yesterday evening, just after we got here.”

“She called just the one time?” Bella asks.

“She called back again later.”

“And they talked, did they?” Bella says, sensing that this is the case.

“They spoke a long time,” Dahaba says.

“What about?”

“He won’t tell me.”

“And you didn’t speak to her yourself?”

“I didn’t want to. I’m still upset from before.”

None of these goings-on surprise Bella, and she sees that Valerie’s blowing hot and cold conjures a parallel pattern of anger and yearning in her daughter, and no wonder. Yet again, Bella marvels at the woman’s narcissism, which seems to know no limits.

Dahaba dries her cheeks and leads Bella by the hand into the living room. Suddenly, she turns and says, “It’s wonderful, wonderful that you are here.”

“You are my only darlings,” Bella says.

“We love you too, you know that.”

“I do, my sweet!”

“So you are here for a week or something, right?” Dahaba asks, as if afraid to venture more.

“No, darling,” says Bella. “I am here forever.” And at the moment she says it, it dawns on her it is true.

“Forever, Auntie?”

“I am not going back to Europe.”

“And you’ll be our mum?”

“Yes, I’ll be your mum and your dad too.”

This time it is tears of joy that wet Dahaba’s cheeks. She takes hold of Bella’s hands, kissing each of them in turn. Not for the first time, Bella marvels at how easily a child’s mood changes.

“And so we don’t need to go boarding, do we?”

“No, you don’t.”

“Wait until I tell Salif!”

It strikes Bella only now how child rearing requires a sort of unconditional internal commitment to the task. Everything to do with raising children has its own rationale, she thinks, constructed along the lines of a minor and a major premise and a conclusion bizarrely drawn from neither. For every child is in a world of his or her own making, and everyone else remains outside of it until there is need to involve them, to invite them in — and then only provisionally, and for self-serving reasons. She remembers a Somali saying something to the effect that one’s children are not one’s parents. Which means, in effect, that we think far more often about our children than they are likely to think of us. Even if you are sick or having money problems or other troubles, she realizes, you must not expect them to respond to your needs in the way you’ve responded to theirs. You won’t be able to sleep when they are sick, and you’ll do whatever you can to alleviate their pain or allay their fears. But do not expect them to feel anyone else’s pain the same way! Until, of course, they become parents themselves and have their own children.

“Is Salif still in bed?” Bella asks Dahaba.

But it is Salif who answers, “I am awake,” and, turning, they see him: a gangly youth trying his best to grow a beard and not succeeding. His face is pimpled, his pajamas are missing a couple of buttons, and he is barefoot. Bella instantly suspects that while Dahaba will benefit greatly from her presence it is Salif who needs more care, however he might insist that he needs no one and nothing.

“Hello, my darling!” Bella says.

But Salif is not in a pliant mood, and he won’t rise from where he is crouched on the bottom step of the stairway. Nor does he attempt to take the hand she offers to lift him up. At last Dahaba goes to him and whispers in his ear. He is not moved.

At last, he says to Bella, “When did you come?”

Dahaba, intervening, says, “Don’t answer him.”

“Yesterday,” Bella replies.

“And why didn’t you tell us you were coming then? We would not have gone away!”

Bella looks him in the eye, aware that this sort of conversation so soon after her arrival does not bode well. “There was a misunderstanding about the time of my arrival,” she says calmly. “I was exhausted and upset, and I sent the wrong information.”

“Have you spoken to Mum?” asks Salif.

Bella hesitates. “Not yet. But I will.”

“About our future?”

Again Bella pauses, wondering how best to proceed. “Of course. That will need to be discussed.”

“She gave the impression you did,” says Salif.

Bella is fairly certain that the cold shoulder she is getting is the one he intends for Valerie. Or perhaps he is just going through a phase where he needs to assert his positions and know that he is being taken seriously. At any rate, her instinct tells her to let him bully her a little. She senses that Valerie is a presence in nearly every conversation Dahaba and Salif have right now, the children taking out their anger and uncertainty on everyone else. She examines her fingernails, as though examining them for structural weaknesses; lately, they have been cracking. Then she looks out the window and spots shadows and the shapes of birds high up in the trees. But she is too far away to hear their chirping. Dahaba joins her where she is standing and the two lock arms, the little one placing her head once again in the curve of Bella’s neck.