Nuruddin Farah - Knots

Hesitant to ask what Raxma meant, Cambara looked away, obviously pretending that she did not hear anything. Raxma hung her head in pensive silence, narrowing her eyes into slits of utter concentration. Apparently, she had made a snap decision in the instant between the time she suggested that the boys order a pizza and the minute she got back into the living room with Cambara. Raxma resolved to send the boys off to boarding school, and she shared her impulsive choice with Cambara.

“What will you do with the time and freedom that you earn from this?” Cambara asked.

Raxma said, “Do you know a lawyer?”

As luck had it, Cambara had a lawyer friend, a neighbor she had known for a number of years. Mauritanian-born Maimouna was a diehard feminist who had experience as a litigator for the cause of women in the Canadian courts. A powerhouse, Maimouna was dedicated, loyal to the wisdom attributed to Simone Weil that if there is a hideous crime in modern society, it is repressive justice against women. She saw her principal role as a fighter for women’s causes, especially the Muslim wives who often had a raw deal in Canada. A patron of the studio and someone she had known for much longer, Maimouna frequently dropped in on Cambara both at work and at home.

“When would you like to meet a lawyer?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Would you like me to present you to one?”

“Yes, soon, and preferably a woman.”

“Consider it done,” Cambara said.

“Then I will take him to the cleaners.”

“After which?”

“If successful, then I’ll work toward settling on an occupation,” Raxma said. “The idea of getting into the import-export business appeals to me. I will have to see how much money I am able to raise from taking someone I know to the cleaners.”

She did not find it curious or annoying that Raxma never, ever mentioned her husband by name — something, Cambara knew, Somali women who were displeased with their spouses tended to do as a way of self-distancing. Such women referred to their spouse only in the third person, as “he” or “him,” without once allowing his name to pass or, rather, sully their lips.

A phone call half an hour later sufficed to get Maimouna to come to Cambara’s apartment for a chat and a bit of salad, and before midnight, the lawyer agreed to represent Raxma. All told, it took about nine months to set a date for the preliminary hearing of the case and less than a year for the couple to reach an out-of-court settlement. In the hiatus, Cambara saw a lot of Raxma and her two boys, spending a lot of her free time with them or their mother. All four of them would drive to Ottawa in one vehicle and visit Arda on long weekends. As it turned out, Raxma was the only person other than Arda who was privy to Cambara’s true thinking about becoming a spouse to Zaak. It was during these early days that Cambara filled her in on what was happening and Raxma chose to stay protectively in the background, reserving the right to remain circumspect until Zaak’s arrival in Toronto. She displayed untiring loyalty to Cambara and held her hand all through her ordeals. When it came her turn to help Cambara, whose life was upended, Raxma stepped in and provided companionship and other forms of encouragement to speed her recovery. She pronounced her catchphrase—“Good riddance to bad rubbish”—on the day Cambara booted out Zaak. Then Raxma filled a designer’s clay pot with water, and, to the accompaniment of ululation and loud drumming, Cambara, at her behest, took a stick to it, breaking it, so that the water, now set free, might flow out, a symbolic enactment of a woman’s release from eternal bondage. They had a weeklong party, together celebrating their status, two women rejoicing their newly enfranchised respective conditions, with Raxma decidedly backdating the coming of her freedom, because it was time, she argued, that she commemorated the event with a reinvigorated sense of accumulated joy.

Before long, Cambara needed Raxma’s wise admonition, having made the acquaintance of a charmer named Wardi, whom she described as her one and only infatuation ever. As Cambara gushed about him in a midnight phone call from Geneva — Cambara did not ring her mother to share the news until several hours later — her advice took the shape of a warning wrapped, with flair, in an offer that Cambara could not refuse. Not only did she reprove her friend to stay clear of the fellow under whose magic spell she had fallen, but she also agreed that were Cambara to respond positively to her own heart’s dictates and choose to disregard her advice, then she could rest assured that this would not upset her at all. She would continue to support her, regardless. She concluded, “Don’t be deceived by his honeyed tongue, but if you feel you are in love and therefore a fool, then I am all for you, my sweet.”

Arda, on the contrary, was unflattering in her first comments about Cambara’s choice of love, her negative response being instantaneous, visceral, scurrilous, and as insalubrious as a city surrounded by swamps fraught with ill-favored affliction. When Cambara’s pleas to talk about it sensibly met with condescending rejection and Arda resorted to making threats that she would have nothing more to do with either of them if Cambara went ahead with this madness, Cambara found a way of bringing their conversation to an end without being terribly rude. But not before Arda had this to say: “How can you be besotted with him when you’ve barely known the man for a week? I have other plans in place for you, my love. Unfortunately, my plans have no room for a loser like him. Let’s be clear about that.”

“It is my life, Mother, and I will do with it what I please, with or without your approval,” Cambara retorted, and hung up the phone.

Raxma met Cambara at the airport, welcoming her back from Geneva with flowers and comforting hugs. Then she had her to dinner that very evening, and, for the first time ever, Cambara embarked, sadly, on mapping out a plan that would alter her life from that time forward, without Arda occupying center stage. Raxma had the privilege of providing what assistance Cambara needed to design the framework, which would facilitate Wardi joining her in Toronto as her spouse. Further input, from a legal point of view, came from Maimouna, whom they consulted shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, convinced that Cambara would come to her senses, what with an ocean separating her from her flame, Arda found herself refusing to negotiate her way out of the tight corner; instead she dug in, unwaveringly adamant that they would see which of them would eat humble pie. The impasse was in place — Arda continuing to help financially and Raxma serving as a link in their indirect contact — until long after Wardi’s arrival and almost three months after Cambara’s visit to the maternity clinic, when she learned that she was pregnant. Then Arda summoned her to visit, alone. Pushing aside their differences, without either alluding to what had transpired, Arda and Cambara got cracking. They did their window-shopping, their arms linked, and Arda showered Cambara and the unborn baby, sex yet unknown, with gifts galore. Truce holding, Cambara flew back to Toronto, joyous. A fortnight later, Arda summoned Wardi to Ottawa, again alone, to assess his trustworthiness. Pressed to pass her judgment, Arda described him as “crafty, with long-term chicaneries hatching on a back burner.” No one dared tell Arda that Cambara had put his name down as a co-owner of the apartment in which they lived. Dalmar’s birth brought Arda fully into the swing of things.

Cambara might have relaxed herself into believing that she was on to good stuff, especially after motherhood and Wardi landing a job with a law firm, thanks to Maimouna, if a curse had not looked upon her with the disfavor: He found other women an eyeful and strayed into other beds. She stepped away from confronting him, at times reasoning that neither would win and that Dalmar, their son, would ultimately be the loser, at others thinking ahead about what Arda might say in her riposte. Then, one day, she left her son, by this time an exuberant, bumbling nine-year-old, in Wardi’s care, only to learn barely six hours later that afternoon that Dalmar had drowned in the pool while Wardi was giving Susannah, his host and law partner, a tumble.