Nuruddin Farah - Knots

Cambara steps out of the vehicle with the determined step of someone who knows where she is going and what she will be doing. Before making much headway, she pauses in her stride, slowing down, and soon enough she remarks that she has SilkHair by her side, waiting expectantly. He is smiling sweetly, and, his hand extended out to her, it is as if he is proposing that she take it and hold it; he is nodding his head by way of encouragement, if she needed one. Cambara is under the positive impression that the young fellow has arrived at a conclusion similar to hers: that he wants to join her, walk alongside her, be with her wherever she is headed. Not in so many words, though. A mere glance can tell her how pleased he is to stand physically close to her, as if pointing out that they share more than either has realized until now.

His hand gingerly smooths the gorgy silkiness of his unkempt hair with studied effeteness, and Cambara wishes she could help him neaten it more by running her fingers through it, grooming it. Her sweeping glance registers everything around — from the driver and the other youths to the guns and, farther right, to where Zaak is scampering away, in a huff. At a midway point in a thought not yet matured, she cannot decide what has become of the boy’s missing upper tooth; another is already going brown, maybe rotten at the root, an abscess not dealt with in time. Or did the missing tooth suffer a sudden trauma? Cambara intends to ask him what has happened to it and to pay the dentist’s bill to have it fixed. Of course, it is possible that he has lost the tooth in fierce fighting or in rough play not so long ago. There is a lot that she wants to know about him — and soon.

“Come with me,” she says to SilkHair.

She motions with her head for him to follow her, which he does very willingly. He hesitates for a fraction of a second, however, wondering whether to take along his weapon and, if not, what to do with it. In the event, he acts decisively and stands it against the wall closest to him but not without removing the cartridge, which, he discovers, contains three bullets. He looks politely in her direction and nods apologetically before pocketing them all. Then he indicates that he is ready to go. These well-thought-out moves leave an impression on Cambara, who feels more positive about him than before. She is of the view that he is a responsible lad who she hopes will give her pleasure to look after. She can’t imagine her son, Dalmar, ever doing a thing like that. No doubt, SilkHair’s and Dalmar’s situations are different, the one raised in Toronto in a caring home, the other born in an immense wasteland, filled with civil war gloom.

She says, “Come,” and moves as though all of a sudden she has freed herself from every sort of impediment in her way, and walks up the stairway to her room now that she is also convinced that Zaak has retreated to nurse a huge sulk. This is nothing new to Cambara, who has known Zaak to withdraw into his moody silences or to leave one perplexed as to what one has done to annoy or slight him whenever he is in a fit of pique. She remembers him looking as sick as a dog suffering from diarrhea and taking shelter in ill humor. In contrast to him, Cambara is famously admired or feared for confronting problems head-on and immediately. Nor does she have difficulty admitting her failings, whatever these are. She is in her element only after she has sorted out a knotty situation; she is in an upbeat mood right after a fight, ready to work out a truce between her and the parties with whom she is warring. No backbiting for her and no slinking away or sinking into a brooding mood, while at the same time he bad-mouths others. She is eager to prove to Zaak and to the boy soldiers that her mettle is of a hardier stuff than all theirs put together. Bent on making things happen, she leads the way into the house, SilkHair following and the driver and the youths watching.

Once inside the house, the two of them alone, Cambara plucks the courage to take SilkHair by the hand, and they walk up the stairway together, she with the resoluteness of someone with a purpose ahead, he with the growing confidence of a youth putting his trust in someone after what has proven to be an awful experience. Just then, she comes to a sudden stop in front of the door to her rooms. She turns her back on him, mouthing the words “Give me a moment,” and then, with circumspective care, she replaces her hand slowly, rather tentatively among the folds of her veil, eventually retrieving the key from where she put it earlier, in her bra. Her forefinger and thumb rubbing and chafing it, the key feels warmer from having snuggled near her breasts.

Again, she is indecisive, hesitating whether to take him downstairs to Zaak’s bathroom, where he should be having his shower, but, because she can’t be bothered to inquire if Zaak might mind, Cambara decides to go the easy way. She tells him, “Wait here.” Then, moving faster than she has done for a long time, she rushes into her room, as if something is chasing her, and in a moment returns with a towel in her right hand, her left engaged in pulling the door to her room and closing it securely behind her.

She points him to where the bathroom is, into which he goes ahead and waits a little warily, as if suddenly becoming conscious of crossing a boundary. He keeps some distance as she turns the tap on at the same time as she holds the towel in her left. Surprisingly, there is running water. She fills a bucket, into which she dips her hand. Even though there is a touch of chill in it, she thinks SilkHair is not likely to mind having a cold shower. In fact, she thinks that he won’t give a damn, at least not as much as she does, she assumes, because he may not know what it is to have it warm.

Face to face with him and a little closer, her heart goes out to him, and she can’t help wanting to touch him. On second thought, she feels she is too forward and, as if covering her tracks, pulls back. She walks over to the wobbly rack pushed into a corner and hardly used, and places the towel on it. She tells him to have his shower and, before leaving the bathroom, adds, “You will find the change of clothes, which I will leave for you outside this bathroom. I want you to put them on and then to join us downstairs, clean and dressed.”

In her room, she rummages in a suitcase marked “Dalmar’s: For Charities,” and she selects two pairs of trousers, several underpants, half a dozen T-shirts, and a portable CD player, which she tests, and having concluded that it is working, she brings along with her. She is confident that at least some of the clothes will fit SilkHair nicely. She leaves the pile for him outside the bathroom door before going down, dead set on shaking things up in Zaak’s place in such a way as to make a difference when she is done.

Cambara tears down the stairway, as though on a warpath, and strides over to the toolshed in the backyard, which has been converted to the qaat -chewers’ retreat. There, the driver and several youths are busy munching away, their cheeks bulging with the stuff, slurping very sweet tea and sipping Coca-Cola. From where she is eavesdropping on their conversation, barely a few meters from the door to the shed, she can hear them chatting lazily about cutthroat civil war politics and also debating about which warlord controls which of the most lucrative thoroughfares in the city and how much money he collects daily from his tax-levying ventures. Speculating, they move on to another related topic, mentioning the name of an upstart clansman of the same warlord, formerly a deputy to him, most likely to unseat said warlord with a view to laying his hands on the thriving business.

Having heard enough about warlords and their presumptive, empty jabbering, she decides it is time she barged in without announcing either her presence or motive. First, she takes her position in the doorway, blocking it — arms akimbo, her feet spread wide apart — and fuming at their conjectural politics and their slovenly behavior. Some of the men look appalled; others appear amused; yet others shake their heads in surprise, as they all unfailingly turn their heads in her direction and then toward each other. To a man, they stop whatever they have been doing, maybe because they were unprepared for her entry.