Nuruddin Farah - Knots

Soon after that she notices three figures rising mysteriously into her view. She is, however, unable to make out the figures in relation to the world the dust storm has thrown into utter confusion. She realizes too that she has to negotiate an obstacle course comprised of a disarray of zinc sheets that have come loose from the nails holding them to the roofs, and small and large pieces of plywood that have tumbled off in somersault urgency, going wherever the gust of dust has deposited them. She is wondering if the pad of papers she has just picked up and is now holding in her hands has anything to do with the figures that have materialized into recognizable human shapes. Unafraid because she has no idea why she should fear them, she puts down her bags and waits for the figures as they come closer. And as she does so, she places the pile of papers in one of the shopping bags and then transfers the weight to her left hand, the better to have a free hand in order to defend herself.

She rides her memory at a gallop, reminding herself that she is carrying a knife and that she has a good chance of winning a confrontation with any manner of youths; she reckons she has the element of surprise on her side. She has no idea who these young men are; for all she knows, they may have been on her heels ever since she left Zaak’s place or have chosen to catch her in a snare, because they saw her walk the same way yesterday. She believes in her heart that ne’er-do-well rogues are weak-kneed, lily-livered, and incapable of standing up to a gutsy surprise-on-her-side, knife-in-her-hand woman who takes the fight to them, which she will do, you can be sure about it. Not that she has ever been mugged, or raped herself, except when acting. She has heard it said that raping women is the principal delight of Mogadiscio youth.

Then, as if on cue, more like a referee stopping a boxing match, a fresh sandstorm gets up so fiercely again that she cannot make them out anymore, and in fact she loses them in the wake of its rise. And when next she spots them, it feels as though they are stirring themselves into her sight, hurtling into view in a tumble of somersaults. At first they appear peripherally, then they come closer, assuming a physical prominence that she associates with imminent danger. Finally, they are there as an unwelcome menace to her existence.

She waits for them. At their approach, her discomfort empties her of all her courage and she feels weak where she has known herself to be strong: in her convictions. This is because she does not know the first thing about what they are after, or if the pad of papers that she picked up and put in her bag has anything to do with it. What can they want? Just to be sure, she stuffs the papers into the front of her veil, close to her chest, her heart beating abnormally fast. It has not been her intention to provoke anyone or attract attention to herself. However, if this is what has happened, she will have to deal with it; she will not fear them or run away from them, conscious that, like dogs, they will zero in on the slightest intimation of panic. They are now bearing down on her, as though they are a pride of lions cornering their pushover prey. She unzips the sides of her custom-made veil so she has more space in which to move about for self-defense.

Four youths, only one of them ostensibly armed, a second bearing a heavy club. She tells herself that she can take the armed one and the one with the club at a go, no question about it. She is worried about the two others, one of them a youth of indeterminate age, more like a dwarf, because of his size and his fully developed muscles, the other thin as a weed, barely a threat. Her knife in her left hand, hidden from view by a shopping bag, she moves away from them with the slowness of a huntress in a territory familiar to her, convincing herself that she is the one in pursuit of them, not they her. She stops all of a sudden and turns on them, the urge to strike at the gun-toting one so great in her mind that she struggles under the weight of her conscience, preoccupied that she might murder him and the one with the club too.

Then she speaks, her voice mean like a man’s. She addresses her words to the tallest of them. She chooses him, because he is moving quickly toward her threateningly while the others stay back, as if deferring to the bodily boundary around a veiled woman, whom a man must not approach in an irreverent way.

“What’s it you want?”

He puts a hard edge into his voice, and, throwing his club away to his right, he studies her expression, maybe with a view to finding out if she is afraid, before saying, “It’s such a shame that you have to cover yourself. Why hide the beauty with which God has blessed you?”

The youth is an addict qaat -chewer, to judge from the rotten state of his teeth and his eyes red from sleeplessness. His demeanor is utterly disdainful once he gets going. He is in all likelihood a flasher too. She has seen his kind of sexual poise and lusty look in other men with equally sick minds. She will not let him frighten her into easy submission. Red-Eyed Randy cups his crotch with his hands and fondles the entire area, his stare trained on her.

“Don’t you want it?” he asks.

To get the better of him, she takes a step back, creating a distance, as she weighs her options, considers what she must do in the face of such crass behavior, and tries to anticipate what his response might be. Of course, she is a novice when it comes to physical violence, this being the first time she has engaged a total stranger in this way. She reasons that it is one thing exchanging blows with Wardi, who in any case was no stranger, and another to take on the city’s rogues. Her body temperature rises to the hotness of an airing cupboard; she is short of breath, her lungs empty of oxygen, feeling as though dried up. If she is not scared stiff, it is because she knows she can karate-kick him in the balls and for good measure boot him on his bum too.

Red-Eyed Randy is surprised that, unafraid, Cambara is fixing him through the veiled netting with a hateful smirk and treating him as if the two of them are duelists holding each in the other’s steady stare, she looking the more amused and he appearing bothered, if a little shaken. This is the way she is playing her mental game: She wants to irritate him into acting prematurely. He has his own plan, however, and starts gesticulating as though masturbating. When she makes mockery of him, Red-Eyed Randy is flummoxed. He becomes more self-conscious the instant he imagines what impression his two mates, who are watching with great interest, will have of him.

In his attempt to gain the upper hand, Red-Eye appeals to his armed companion, maybe suggesting that he intervene. Cambara now concentrates her stonier stare on Red-Eye’s mate, ArmedCompanion. The movements of her hand under her robe meet his worried expressions, and the armed youth takes a step backward. He stands apart from everyone else, vigilant, and even with his weapon poised, ready to shoot, he acts as though he is noncommittal. Cambara behaves as if none of this fazes her. She waits for one of the youths to make a move, and as she does, she bores her barely visible eyes into the soft center that she identifies in the youngest of the youths, who strikes her as very sweet and of a vulnerable age and perhaps background, even if susceptible to peer influence. She reckons that he has not the mad courage to challenge either Red-Eye or ArmedCompanion or to stop them from being a nuisance.

She says to him in an older woman’s tone of voice, which sounds effortlessly shaky, “Have your friends no respect for a woman their mothers’ age who is on her way to an ailing granddaughter who is as old as they are?”

MereBoy fidgets. He looks from Red-Eye to ArmedCompanion, then to his silent mate, and finally to Cambara, his expression marked with a huge indecision. The unreality of her current situation and MereBoy’s pleading look prompt her to reach deep within her in an effort to tap her requisite sense of aplomb. She is aware that MereBoy is no challenge to them; she knows it and knows that they know it. Moreover, he does not have the words with which to set himself apart from them. And even though she discerns that he wishes he had the means to express his separateness, yet it is obvious that he is not bestowed with the physical strength or experience to fight off Red-Eye and ArmedCompanion successfully. It eases Cambara’s anxiety a little that MereBoy is on her side. That leaves her to contend with the two who are picking a fight and a third who is silent all the time. Not knowing what he may do or if he will want to get involved, she prepares to practice her karate on anyone who makes the slightest threatening move.