Nuruddin Farah - Hiding in Plain Sight

After completing their studies, they went their separate ways, but they stayed in touch. Valerie was very surprised when Padmini entered into an arranged marriage. Rajiv was okay, but he and Padmini were nothing alike. Meanwhile, Valerie went from boyfriend to boyfriend until she met Aar, her first long-term affair. He was five years her senior and based in Geneva as an employee of the UN. He traveled a lot, which was part of his appeal for Valerie. He would go to London for weekends, where he would share her room at the hotel where she was a deputy manager, mainly in charge of the bars, the restaurants, and the catering service. She spent a wonderful week with him in Senegal in a beach house he borrowed from a colleague who worked with him in Geneva. Back in England, she brought him along to a party at Padmini’s. That night, Valerie became pregnant. When she informed Aar, he sought Bella’s counsel. Bella was not in favor of her brother’s having a child with Valerie, nor of their marrying. She said, “I have a visceral dislike of the woman and would advise against your marrying her.”

But Aar and Valerie were married anyway, in Mali, at a ceremony where the country’s most famous band led by Salif Keita performed. Several local notables had been invited and everyone had a good time, especially the marrying couple. And during the first few years of their marriage, it was universally agreed they were a happy couple. They had Salif, who was named for the bandleader, and then Dahaba.

After that, things seemed to change. Aar was loyal to her, and Valerie was hospitable to their friends, but at home he took more care of the children than she did; she seemed relaxed only in the company of other adults, especially when she and Aar were giving dinners. Aar felt, Bella remembers, that these gatherings gave Valerie’s life purpose. When they were living in Geneva, she set up a catering business for the foreign embassies, consulates, and UN bodies. But she was always fighting with her employees and firing them.

Padmini remained a frequent visitor, staying away from Rajiv for longer and longer spells. During Aar’s protracted absences from home, Padmini and Valerie slept in the same bed; the children, especially Dahaba, were unsettled by this and complained to Aar about it. But because Valerie seemed happy again and complained less, he stayed quiet. By then, Valerie had abandoned all pretense of running the catering business. It was equally obvious that Padmini’s marriage was doomed, but she hadn’t the heart to bring it to an end, reasoning that in her culture such things were not done.

The first time Aar caught Valerie and Padmini in bed was when Valerie fell asleep in Dahaba’s bed after reading her a bedtime story and instead of joining Aar in the conjugal bed, she went to Padmini’s room, sneaking back to Dahaba’s bed before sunrise. Good breeding forbade Aar to speak of what he saw. But when Bella came for a brief visit, he talked about what was going on. To his surprise, Bella refrained from giving him advice. Perhaps, he thought, she’d decided it was too late to give her opinion on Valerie.

And so Aar bided his time until an opportunity presented itself. There was an opening in the Nairobi office. Padmini was on one of her many visits. He told Valerie he had to go to the New York head office for an interview, and by the time he returned, he would know if he had the job in either Vienna or Nairobi, with a possible secondment to Somalia. When he got back, Padmini was there. He told Valerie he had been offered the position in Vienna. Eventually, he said, he hoped to be transferred to somewhere in Africa, preferably closer to home.

Valerie did not appear to be enthusiastic about moving to Vienna with him. Unlike Aar, who had already acquired Italian in Somalia, English in Canada, and French in Geneva, she was not proficient in languages and had no intention of learning German.

Valerie smiled when her eyes met Padmini’s but frowned when her gaze encountered Aar’s knowing grin. He guessed that Valerie and Padmini needed time alone to talk things through. A furtive glance at his wristwatch supplied him with an excuse to depart. “I’ll pick up the children from afterschool,” he said. “Let us talk later after dinner.”

When he returned home with the children, he found a note from Valerie. The note simply said that she and Padmini had gone to the gym for a workout and were not coming home for supper that night. They did not return until about one o’clock in the morning; a light sleeper, Aar woke to the sound of Valerie’s key in the lock and then their footsteps.

A couple of days later, Padmini left, and things seemed normal between Aar and Valerie, even if she didn’t return to the conjugal bed or accept any of his physical approaches. As he was not the type to force a woman to do his bidding, especially his wife, Aar acceded to her request that they remain physically apart.

Aar was not due to begin the job in Vienna until the fall. With the end of the school year approaching, Salif and Dahaba talked of how eager they were to visit a game park in Africa. Aar said, “What a brilliant idea.” He suggested a family trip to Nairobi in a bid to work on the marriage and mend his rapport with Valerie without the presence of Padmini. All four of them had a wonderful time, above all Valerie, who was equally delighted to see wild game galore and sample some of the sixty-four types of meat served at the restaurant Carnivore, which Salif adored and Dahaba, who was in her vegetarian phase, hated. Taking long walks and long drives, staying up late and rising early to watch wild animals in their habitat, everyone enjoyed the visit to the game park. But as the trip progressed, Valerie began to run a high fever, especially in the evenings, apparently because a tick bit her.

When they were back in Geneva and ready to move to Vienna, Valerie’s fever persisted, but she still refused to see a doctor, until she developed massive headaches as well, whereupon Aar insisted she see someone. She was eventually diagnosed as suffering from the aftereffects of a tick bite. Most of her physical symptoms came under control, but others — the obvious volatility to her behavior in particular — persisted.

Three months later, just at the end of the school year, Valerie was suddenly gone. She left Aar not even a note saying where she had gone or when she would be back. He called her mother, who didn’t know any more than he did. He tried contacting Padmini, but she didn’t answer either his e-mails or his phone calls. When September neared, Aar relocated himself and the children to Vienna, arranging to move their belongings and enroll the children in a new school.

“We were meant for each other,” Valerie now says to Padmini. “That is the long and short of it. And although we failed in Uganda, I am optimistic that we’ll be successful in our effort to reclaim my children. I can’t imagine them not wanting to be with us and staying with Bella instead.”

“Yes,” Padmini says, “Bella doesn’t have the patience to look after teenagers, I reckon. Here one week, Brazil the next, then Mali and back to Rome, the life of a sailor.”

Valerie yawns and looks away, eyes closed. She is thinking about Bella and the appetites she senses in her. Yet Bella is so discreet that in all the years Valerie has known her she never worked out where Bella was with sex. With whom did she do it, if at all? Was she frigid or merely discreet?

Valerie asks Padmini what she thinks. “Of course there are lovers,” Padmini says. “There have to be.”

“Some women who hide in plain sight?” says Valerie.

“You reckon she is in the closet?” says Padmini.

Valerie says that she once asked Aar directly about his sister’s love life. “He looked at me, amused. Then he said, ‘For crying out loud, she is my sister.’” That was Aar, proper in every way. And that was Bella, a mystery. “In all the years I’ve known her,” Valerie says, “I haven’t detected any flicker of an intimation of what excites her.”