Nuruddin Farah - Knots

Cambara’s family owned two properties and, thanks to Arda’s foresight and keen profit-making acumen, invested the surplus funds overseas, in Canada, when it was not fashionable among Mogadiscians to do so. The family — her parents, herself, and Zaak — lived in the modest one, a bungalow with six rooms, two bathrooms, and a small out-building with its own toilet facilities, in which the family accommodated long-term guests. However, the property that she intends to repossess is the larger one, bought by her father on her mother’s advice and described, in estate-agent terms, as a worthy investment. An upmarket property, it had pride of place with direct access to its own beach, not to speak of an immense garden, built to accommodate a large function. She remembers how — when she was young in Mogadiscio, when Somalis were then at peace with their own ideas about themselves and proud of their uniqueness as a nation — her parents raised a huge monthly income from renting the upmarket property to the Canadians, who used it as a guesthouse for their Kenya-based embassy officials during their brief visits to Somalia.

Her father’s printing business helped settle almost all the family expenses, including Cambara’s private schooling and Zaak’s boarding school fees. The rent money from the property paid for the occasional trips abroad, and, to her mother’s everlasting credit and management skill, the family put away the savings, which paid for Cambara’s college education in Canada until she got a scholarship and then later helped buy an apartment for her to live in in Toronto. Sadly, Cambara did not return home in time before the collapse. However, her parents got out, flying first to Nairobi and then joining her in Toronto for a while as her guests. Half a year later, they relocated to Ottawa and bought their own place, a good-sized apartment in a housing complex in the eastern suburbs of Ottawa, close to Arda’s Canadian friends in the diplomatic corps, with whom she had frequently dealt when they visited Somalia and whom she invited often to dinner whenever they were in Mogadiscio on some diplomatic business.

Nothing gave the newly relocated couple as much pleasure as seeing their daughter in her debut as an actor on the stage. There were rave notices in almost all the major papers, one of them singling her out as the best new talent to be revealed in Canada in years. These reviews — and the fact that her parents enjoyed the show — helped stir Cambara’s blood so much that she believed she had an excellent chance of becoming a full-time actor. To supplement her income, she trained as a makeup artist, investing in it as a business, while she waited for a breakthrough.

Now she slows down considerably, almost coming to a halt, as the family house rears into view. Her heart racing, her brain on the boil working overtime, she has hardly decided what to do next when, nearing the gate to the property, she discovers it ajar, a large stone keeping it from closing. She sees evidence of life in the gate remaining half open, but there is no way she can determine who has left it that way and why. It was common enough for people to leave their doors open night and day when she lived in Mogadiscio and you could take peace for granted. Later, with kickbacks and other forms of corruption creating overnight millionaires, the city became flooded with the unemployed, the poor, and the migrants from the starving hinterland, and fences went up faster than you could tally the changing death and birth statistics. Sometime later, residents upgraded the fences, putting broken glass, razor blades, and electric wire on top to deter robbers. Imagine: an open gate. What can it mean?

As she waits, anxiety throws Cambara into an agitated state, with the up-and-down convulsions of her chest resembling the suddenness of an asthmatic attack invading at short notice, and she breaks out in heavy perspiration. Then the actor in her takes over, and she calms herself down, wipes away the sweat from her forehead, and decides to act the part, improvising, inventing. After all, she knows what she wants, but the woman at the gate who is small and in advanced pregnancy has no idea who Cambara is. It will be her ill fortune if Gudcur is at home asleep, recovering from a long night of qaat -chewing orgy. She hopes that there are more rewards in what she is doing than there are risks.

She takes one long, last look at the half-open gate, the sight of which, fear and suspicion aside, makes sobering imagining. Cambara nods as though agreeing with the rightness of the decision, and plucks sufficient courage to move speedily toward the woman at the gate before questioning her own sanity.

Cambara leans against a wall, hidden from view, her heart pounding terribly, the circulation of her blood going anxiously faster than is good for her. The whole area, when she has had a moment to survey it, strikes her as being more ruinous than she has expected: a run-down rampart built to defend a soon-to-fall city. Tied up in knots churning inside her guts, she takes her time looking around for anything or anyone that might pique her interest.

She is thinking long and not without despondency when, by a singular stroke of good fortune, the woman heavy with child waddles wearily out, carrying out a bucket. The woman, in virtual rags, empties the filthy contents of the bucket into an open sewer twenty or so meters to the left of the gate. Whatever words Cambara has meant to use, words that she has rehearsed in her head endless times and with which she might explain her business of being here, catch at her throat, threatening to choke her and refusing to let go. Only after the actor in her reemerges and takes over, and she is able to breathe a little more freely, does she push aside the strip of muslin that has served as a face veil, the better to inhale or exhale normally. It is then that the woman becomes aware of Cambara’s towering presence. Startled, the woman drops the bucket, cradling her head protectively with her hands and bracing herself for a blow, noisily breathing in and out, clearly in fright.

Cambara, her skin crawling with embarrassment, enunciates her speech. She says the one word “Water,” likening it to the magical properties of a mirage and investing in the word everything paradisial that everlasting life has in store for one. The woman rubs her eyes with the heel of her soiled hands, then wipes her cheeks dry with the edge of her robe, exposing her advanced pregnancy and a larger-than-usual belly button.

When she is certain that she has the woman’s full attention, Cambara speaks tentatively in her attempt to assure the woman that she has lost her way to the shopping complex and desperately needs some water to drink. She feigns a dry throat, and shortness of breath, from her thirst, and says “Water” repeatedly until the woman nods a couple of times, indicating that she has heard.

Cambara adds, “My hosts have told me that there is a small shopping complex in this neighborhood where I can get some bottled water. But I must have missed the right turn, have I?”

The woman looks up, her eyes filling with a fresh sense of welcome relief. “You’ve missed the turn. It is a couple of streets down this way,” and she points, the ends of her fingernails charcoal-black with residual dirt, “then you turn left, and the small shopping block is there, you can’t miss it,” replies the woman.

“There is a general store?”

“There is a general store for foodstuffs, and a few stalls where you can get fresh vegetable produce, but you can’t get meat there,” the woman informs her. “But your hosts ought not to send you out on your own. It is not safe for a woman to be on her own in these parts of the city.”

The woman retrieves the bucket before beckoning her to follow her and waddling ahead of Cambara into the house. A smile adorns the woman’s lips. She keeps the pedestrian gate open, half curtsying, and lets Cambara go past her. Cambara walks in warily and turns around a little awkwardly, waiting for the woman to close the gate behind them. Then she winces at the thought of harming this woman or her child on impulse, in self-defense or in her desire to recover her family’s property at a future point. She hopes to be on this woman’s good side, at least until she knows more about her relationship with the minor warlord. She resolves to shut out every moldering rot in the image she has constructed in her head in order to take the woman into her trust.