Nuruddin Farah - Hiding in Plain Sight

Salif says, “Uncle Mahdi told me that the death of a father is the making of a son. Not in quite those words, but something along those lines.”

“And is that what you feel?”

Salif replies, “Yes, I think so. The surviving older offspring has to take on more of a burden of responsibility and offer help to the other immediate family members, especially the younger ones, who are in more need than he.”

“Is that what you will be doing, helping Dahaba?”

She locks gazes with him in the side mirror into which they are staring from their respective positions. Neither looks away, as each holds the other’s gaze. At this, he comprehends her meaning.

“But she is annoying,” he complains.

“You haven’t answered my question. Have you?”

“She is trouble every minute of every day.”

“Still, have you shown her kindness?”

“I doubt it,” he says grudgingly.

“How about you do it? There’s nothing stopping you.”

They are passing through a village now. An accident has occurred here — just a few minutes before, from the looks of it. The street is full of bystanders curiously looking on. Bella thinks of how one accident often leads to another; she has never understood why crowds gather around collisions. Are they there to share the gory details of what has occurred or get their hands on any available loot while everyone is distracted? Salif suggests that they stop to see if they can be of any help, but at Bella’s urging, worried for their safety, the driver pushes on. After all, she has in the trunk of the car her photo equipment as well as her computer, her passport, and quite a lot of cash.

She returns to their earlier conversation. “Being the older sibling, in what way do you feel obligated to care for Dahaba, your younger sibling?”

“It should be a pleasure, not a duty.”

“Do you find the weight of this responsibility — even if it is a pleasure — too heavy to bear at your young age?”

“No,” says Salif thoughtfully. “After all, my father started helping you when he was even younger than I am, and he contributed to your life in some ways more than either of your parents, according to what you’ve both told me.”

“Does it worry you that your father’s death could be the unmaking of you?” Bella asks, and then she pauses before continuing, “You will have more freedom, which, if not wisely used, can be the cause of inescapable failure — yes?”

Salif says, “Dad as a single parent carried the burden of our absent mother. This means I have twice the weight my father carried.”

“Are you man enough to meet the challenge?”

Neither speaks, but Bella observes that a touch of sorrow has entered his eyes. She asks, more gently, “Are you okay?”

“Why are we talking about all this?” he says.

“What do you think?”

“To be sure, I was out of order earlier,” Salif at last acknowledges. “Can I rely on you to guide me and set me right when I go wrong?”

“Of course, darling,” Bella says.

“It is a deal, then.”

They are getting close to Aar’s house — even Bella recognizes the neighborhood now. When they turn into a side street, Salif leans forward.

“Ours is the fourth house on the left,” he says.

They stop in front of a green gate and honk. A man in a uniform — a day guard — opens the gate and they drive in.

Dahaba awakens. Salif gets out of the car but does not retrieve the bags from the trunk. Dahaba is woozy, deeply involved in her sleep or a recent memory of a dream; she sits on the front steps of the door, waiting to be told when they will go in or what they will do.

Meanwhile, Bella asks the driver how much she owes him. He takes a long time working this out and she waits patiently, watching his lips move as he calculates then decides on a sum then shakes his head, probably thinking he has totaled the fare wrongly. Such a sweet man, Bella thinks, and she decides to assist. And to make it all aboveboard, lest he should think that she is cheating him, they do the sum together, so much per hour, so much per kilometer — and then she adds a generous tip. He leaves a happy man, grinning from cheek to jowl and offering to come and get her whenever she needs a ride. In fact, for a moment, she even abandons the thought of driving Aar’s car to the hotel and parking it there — and instead she thinks about requesting that he take her to Hotel 680 now. But she remembers that they have to settle in the house and get something to eat before she returns there.

As the limousine reverses, Bella observes that one of the day guards has come to offer to help carry the bags in. But Salif declines the offer, saying, “Thanks, but we can cope.”

When he sees the question in Bella’s eyes, he whispers, “It is always safer not to let any security personnel know the inside of your house. Then they won’t be able to organize break-ins if you fire them. You learn that by living here.”

They wait for Salif to disarm the alarm. When he has done that, he comes out to help to bring in the bags, one at a time, leaving them on the ground floor for the moment.

“I’ll take them all up later,” he says.

Dahaba, now fully awake, is in her element; she says, “Just because we are women, it doesn’t mean we can’t carry our own bags upstairs ourselves.”

Salif refrains from answering back, and Bella is impressed. Maybe their little talk has made an impression. Salif makes himself busy opening the downstairs windows then turning on the taps until the water runs clear. Not that it is drinkable unless it is boiled, Bella reminds herself.

With Dahaba trailing her every step, Bella gives herself time to take it all in: a big house with two floors and, from what she can so far see, boasting a sizeable kitchen, a lavatory, and plenty of secure windows with mosquito netting fastened between the outer safety glass and the inner blast-proof safety panes. There is a large living room boasting a big flat-screen TV of Japanese manufacture, and Dahaba is pleased to explain the complicated processes of how to turn it on, play video games, and go back to watching TV.

Bella is thinking of other practical considerations. She says to Salif, “Do you still have a maid in your employ?”

“We do,” Salif says hesitantly.

“Dad didn’t think well of her,” Dahaba says.

“Why is that?”

“He used to say she had butterfingers.”

Bella says, “Dropping things, breaking them?”

“We are still paying her though,” Salif says.

Bella is so encouraged by the progress Salif has made in such a brief time that she wonders if she can train the children to help run the house without the services of a maid. For when she looks through the cupboards, she observes other signs of sloppiness or laziness: The forks don’t match; the plates belong to different eras of the household, some going back to the day when Aar and the children lived in England and some from when they were residing in Vienna.

“Let’s not call anyone yet,” Bella suggests. She decides to talk to them about this later.

“Let’s enjoy one another’s company,” Dahaba says.

“All right by me,” Salif says.

Salif and Dahaba are in their element now that they are in their own home. They are more at ease, as if they feel unbound, unchained. Bella knows that their father’s death will hit one or the other of them hard and knock them around. It is one of the challenges awaiting her, the revisiting of sorrows, the emptiness. But just now, they are cheerful.

Bella follows Salif up the stairs, helping with the luggage. As she remembers, there are four bedrooms, three of them en suite, one for each of them, plus a spare room, which served as Aar’s study, the only one that was often locked in Aar’s day.