Nuruddin Farah - Knots

Kiin reads her own meaning into Cambara’s silence, and she asks if there is a problem.

“A problem?”

“If you’ll permit an indiscretion,” says Kiin.

“Please feel free.”

“Is there a man hereabouts that you’ve come to see and from whom you do not wish to be separated? Put another way, do you have a man problem?” Kiin asks and, having done so, takes on a disarranged appearance, like a room that has been tossed and then left in haste.

“That is a very interesting way of putting it: a ‘man problem.’” Cambara looks amused, nods her head, and repeats the phrase a couple of times, grinning.

Kiin says, “Tell me what you got yourself into and we can solve any man problem or any other difficulty, whatever its nature. I owe it to Raxma; I owe it to you as a woman. We deal easily with men problems in civil war Mogadiscio.”

Talk of holding the wrong end of a stick, which, considering Kiin’s take on it, makes sense. Understandably, Kiin has misconstrued Cambara’s story as told to her by Raxma and has played up the man problem, assuming Wardi to be the culprit. Unaware of the makeup of Cambara’s hesitation to take up the offer of a clean room and toilet with immediate effect, Kiin has apparently shifted the scene, mistaking Toronto, where Cambara’s man problem occurred, for Mogadiscio, where there is nothing of the kind.

“Tell you what?” Kiin soldiers on, determined to help. “Give me your list of needs, and I’ll go shopping around and provide them the best I can.”

Cambara is herself surprised the moment the words leave her lips, because she has not given serious thought to a shopping list in as clear a manner as she is now presenting it to Kiin. It is as if she is the medium for an elsewhere woman into whom she has lapsed for the present.

“I have jobs that require the services of an electrician, a carpenter, and a plumber,” Cambara says. “I would like you to help me find these skilled workers and for them to start on the jobs I have in mind. There is no question about it. I will move into Maanta sooner than you think.”

“Does that mean you’ve bought a property?”

“It does not mean that.”

“Does it mean that you’ve recovered your family property, which ragged, qaat -chewing squatters have vandalized, reducing it to an inhabitable state? Are you living there now and want to move into Maanta while it is being renovated?” Kiin wonders.

“No, it does not mean that.”

“What does it mean then? Why do you need a carpenter, a plumber, and an electrician?”

“It’s all very complicated,” replies Cambara.

“Will you kindly unpack the character of your difficulties, explaining what they are, so I am in a position to help?”

“Give me a day or two and I will,” says Cambara.

Kiin behaves in a strange way. Her eyes, misting over, look away, to discourage Cambara from reading a meaning into her actions. Does Kiin feel that she is cold-shouldering her? It seems as if her enthusiasm is collapsing like a balloon pricked with a sharp object and exploding, crumpling into lifelessness.

Kiin is the first to break the awkward silence and looks for a waiter, maybe to settle the bill and then go. It is obvious from the way she shifts in her seat that she is ending the conversation. She says to Cambara, “Do you have your own transport, or would you like me to organize a lift back to where you are staying?”

Cambara susses out that her silence has rubbed Kiin the suspicious way and tells herself that nothing she does or says will soften the hardness that has entered Kiin’s voice or look. She realizes that she is to blame, not Kiin. It is too late, maybe, to revisit the topic. Anyhow, she needs the unrushed time to do the right thing, to get to know Kiin better. No more scrambling; she needs time and will insist on taking it.

“I would appreciate a lift, thank you.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At my cousin’s place.”

“Where is his house?”

“Near the former cigarette factory.”

Kiin catches the eye of the waiter, whom she sends out to call her driver up. The chauffeur, a very slim, handsome man in his early twenties, joins them and stands at an angle, half facing away, as he listens to Kiin, who tells him to take the staff of three — in Mogadiscio lingo, armed guards — and give a ride to Cambara, who is putting up in a house near the former cigarette factory.

“Am I to come back and pick you up from here?”

“No need,” Kiin says. “This is my city.”

Cambara asks politely, “Are you sure?”

“I’ll borrow a car from this hotel.”

As they part, Kiin hugging Cambara, and Cambara saying how much of a pleasure it has been to meet, she gives Cambara a piece of paper from an exercise book on which she has written all her coordinates. “You’ll hear from me before the end of tomorrow,” promises Kiin.

“I’ll aim to see you soon,” Cambara assures her.

Cambara, no longer wearing impediments of any form, comes down light-footed and fresh after a cold shower. She is carrying bagfuls of purchases from the shopping complex, which she puts down on the floor when she comes upon the ugliness that is Zaak. Bare-chested, he is standing wobbly in a sarong shakily tied round his waist, his forehead glowing with sweat. He is pacing the breadth and width of the living room. He stops moving when she is within a meter of him. He sniffs out a trace of the cologne she is wearing and for some reason is furious, like a jealous husband locating alien scents his partner has just brought in from the outside.

After a measured pause and with a mischievous grin embellishing his features, Zaak asks, “Have you been out and, if so, where?”

Nonplussed, she surrenders herself to the unbecoming mixed emotions knocking at the door of her brain. For, among other things, she wonders if it is worth her while to remind him that he has no right to put to her such a question in that tone of voice, which she finds intrusive, insensitive, offensive, and that she hopes that he withdraws it, since he can not expect her to answer it. She feels justified in ignoring him and remains unspeaking for a long time, making certain that she keeps her temper in check. What’s his concern with where she goes? How dare he assume that he can ask her questions like that?

“Yes, I’ve been out,” she says.

“Where have you been?”

Zaak’s tone of voice belongs to a couple of unpleasant memories that she has often associated with the years following their separation as a couple when he showed his ugly colors.

“Here and there,” she says.

His face, swollen from sleep deprivation, wears a porcine expression, and his throat issues something of a growl. He says, “Here and where?”

“Nowhere specific.”

“And what did you do?”

“Nothing in particular.”

Then he sounds unexpectedly friendlier than he feels, she thinks, as he asks, “You’ve been having the feel of the city, from which you’ve been away for a very long time, have you?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Precisely where is here and where is there?”

Cambara looks into space, dejectedly pondering. After a few seconds, her thoughts take shape in bits and pieces, this resulting in enough angry words to crowd her windpipe, badgering her to speak them. She makes a considered attempt to put flesh on her ideas without giving in to her rage. To her surprise, because the jumbles of uncoordinated phrases catch at her throat, annoying her, she curses quietly in frustration. Several attempts later, she issues a sound that is neither a cringe nor a snicker but more like a naughty girl’s attempt at fighting back a fit of giggles and failing. She continues swearing under her breath and still manages to control her anger, convinced that whatever she says now will seem inappropriate, even if she puts all she has into her rebuff in response to his mildly hostile rebuke, a reprimand cast in the guise of a question.