Nuruddin Farah - Knots

“Why?”

“I’ve seen him before.”

“Where?”

“At The Refuge that he ran.”

“What did he do that you didn’t like?”

“He was very, very strict.”

“When was that?”

“I was younger, before I became a fighter.”

“Why didn’t you like him? Tell me.”

SilkHair, she gathers from his response, saw Bile as a wizened old man with skin so smooth, manners so affected, that he fled and joined the first fighting force that might trust him with a gun.

They return to the stage, she pulling him, and they resume their rehearsal, Gacal performing his role very well, and SilkHair adequately. Then all of a sudden, SilkHair says, “I won’t be a chicken, only an eagle. I must be one of the eagles; I am no chicken and won’t be one. No matter what.”

Not for the first time, Cambara takes the trouble to explain that a real actor, who is human, may on occasion represent a fictional character, say an animal, and that a child at times may play the role of an adult, provided one follows certain conventions. Her patience a little too stretched, she tells him that it is because of a convention that younger boys playing the roles of men older than their age sport a full beard and walk with a stoop. Younger girls wear the head scarves of older women, and they hunch their shoulders as part of the make-believe.

In a theatrical aside, Gacal, using the side of his mouth that is close to her, makes a snide comment: that SilkHair does not know the difference between playing the role of and being the character or the animal. Then he says aloud, more to impress Bile and Cambara and to goad SilkHair into further outrages, “SilkHair’s problem is he does not know and does not want to say that he does not know.”

“Say what you like, I won’t be a chicken.”

Determined to find the underlying cause of his obstinance one way or the other, Cambara asks SilkHair why he is unprepared to play a chicken, even though she has not assigned such a role to him.

“I am giving you advance warning that I will not play the role of a chicken,” he replies. “No matter what.”

“Why?”

“Because I do not want my mates the fighters to point at me and make clucking sounds, as if I am a chicken.”

“Who says they will see you as a chicken?”

“Some of the fighters will, like Qasiir.”

“But you don’t mind being an eagle? And Gacal has no problem playing the chicken?”

“Because where I come from, my clan family owns everything, including the sky. Gacal comes from a family of farmers, lowly people who, like chickens, live on scraps, on other people’s leftovers. They are as cheap as the dirt at which they pick.”

“I think a brief pause is in order,” she says.

As they disperse, in silence, she tells herself maybe the break will help her deal with the other hurdles of an artistic, text-related nature, although she doubts that she will be able to remove these obstacles until they are well into serious rehearsals, and even then may not be able to take care of the problems. Reading a text through the one time may not highlight or unbury all its inadequacies right away. This being her directorial debut, with the likes of SilkHair, she wonders how well her first attempt at playwriting and directing will work and how much rewriting she will have to do before she is happy with it. Written texts, she imagines, often require more than a read-through and much rewriting before the dialogue takes on its own life, independent of its author.

SilkHair goes off in a huff and sits away from everyone, on Seamus’s toolboxes; Gacal finds a stool and is admiring a handful of the props, makeup paraphernalia, and other tools of her theatrical trade. Cambara, who walks over to where Bile is, wonders aloud when she might lay the groundwork aimed at making SilkHair and Gacal come to grips with the challenges that lie ahead of them.

“All will be fine, you’ll see,” Bile says.

Cambara has no heart to contradict his optimism, even if she is actually entertaining second thoughts about the whole thing. “Maybe I should put in more time, school Gacal in understanding the role he is playing. That it is not a chicken. I hate to make it sound so hoity-toity and literary and talk to him about metaphors and all that crap.”

Bile struggles with a thought before saying “It’s always novices who believe they know better. SilkHair strikes me as being used to fighting his way to the top. But you can’t do that in life all the time.”

She asks, “Do you remember ever knowing him?”

“I’ve seen lots of children in my days at The Refuge,” Bile says. “He may have been one of the ‘tourists.’ We used to refer to them as such, because they would come infrequently when their families ran out of food, or when there was fighting in their area that displaced them. Am I supposed to have met him?”

“At The Refuge. You were too strict.”

“And he left?”

“And joined a fighting force.”

Now Bile and Cambara pay attention to the boys. They can hear their conversation, Gacal saying “I have no problem playing the role of a chicken. You become the eagle; I, the chicken. How about that?”

SilkHair, his index finger warning Gacal to stop provoking him, starts shooting arrows of venom now in Gacal’s direction, now in Bile’s, his hard look weakening only when it encounters Cambara’s, and he turns back to Gacal angrily. “If you don’t stop messing with me, I’ll make you eat shit.”

Gacal eggs him on with his sarcasm, saying “Oh please, please, SilkHair. Spare me. Don’t hurt me; don’t harm me. I’m quivering.”

“I’m warning you,” SilkHair says.

Standing, SilkHair towers over Gacal, his teeth clenched in anger at being provoked when he cannot do anything about it. His hands appear underutilized, as if they wished they had a weapon to use. Looking away with exasperation, he turns to observe that Cambara is watching every one of his moves intently. Cambara thinks that he’ll need training in anger management, considering that he has been accustomed to falling back on the use of a firearm whenever he felt so inclined. He is clearly on a low, like an addict finding it difficult to kick the habit.

Gacal continues to incite him, saying “You haven’t the balls, have you?”

“I said I’m warning you.”

“Boys are boys,” Bile says.

“Are they…always?” from Cambara.

In her wish to preempt further provocative exchanges, she settles on inaction, assuming that if she shows no interest to them, they will calm down on their own.

Perhaps boys are boys because people believe that it is healthy for them to tease, prod, and incite each other, she thinks, but I am wondering if these two are behaving in this way now and doing what they are doing because they are enjoying the closest yet to a normal life. A baby will weep its throat sore when hungry, but once it has had enough of its mother’s breast milk, it will bite the nipple playfully and then laugh. Not before they have had their fill. Afterward, they fool with the food, spitting it, spilling it.

“Time to think of feeding the lot of you,” she says, getting up and waiting for Bile to do likewise. “Two young cantankerous mouths to feed, not to speak of a guest with refined taste, I bet. What can I offer? No more than good intentions, considering the crockery in unopened boxes, the chicken still in its live form. There are veggies, yes. But I doubt there are spices or if Irrid remembered to get salt.”

“We can order a takeaway,” Bile says, following her in the direction of what he knows to be an unfinished kitchen, the old tiles removed from the wall and the new ones not yet here.

“A takeaway? Fancy that.”

“First nights in new places are a challenge,” he says. “Why don’t we ring Dajaal, who can’t be very far, as he is overseeing the security details around here, and he can bring back a meal from Hotel Shamac or from Maanta.”