Nuruddin Farah - Knots

Cambara says, “Tell me your story, how you come to remain in a city many others have fled, and how you come to run a hotel.”

As Kiin pauses to formulate her ideas, Cambara tries to requisition her hand in the gentle way a mother might reclaim her finger, without any untoward disturbance, from the clutches of a child now asleep.

“The city exploded into strife while I spent almost a month in the intensive care unit of the hospital under a doctor’s supervision,” Kiin says. “I had been married less than a year and was losing blood and had worries about my baby’s state of health, fearing that I might suffer a miscarriage. Anyhow, I was in no condition physically or mentally to be discharged, what with the tubes and the drips that I was on. I was heavy, I was miserable in my self-loathing, I was sick — in short, I was everything I never wanted to be. Given my situation, it did not make sense to me or to my then husband to join those fleeing the fighting in the city.”

At the mention of a then husband, Cambara takes note of a brief clouding of Kiin’s features. Then she asks, “You had your baby, though, yes?”

“A baby girl, born premature.”

“And surviving?”

“I have had another daughter since then.”

“How old are they?”

“Ten and twelve.”

“That’s wonderful, that is wonderful.”

“I would love you to meet them.”

“Where are they?”

“Here with me,” Kiin replies.

“Do they stay at the hotel?”

“No, at our home,” Kiin says, her finger pointing to a hole in the wall, which Cambara eventually works out to be a door carved out of it. “In fact, it is the reason why I am not eating here. After I’ve kept you company, I will spend the afternoon with them, now that they are done with school for the day.”

“Where do they school?”

The waiter brings the salad, which Cambara starts to dress, after receiving an indication that Kiin will not have any. Then Kiin explains that given the absence of a central government and the lack of a functioning school system in the country, many middle-class families residing in the city have organized themselves into schooling neighborhoods, pooling their financial resources and running home-schooling facilities for their children, with manageably smaller classes. To teach, the stay-in-the-city families, many of whom feel they belong here more than they do in Europe or North America as refugees or landed immigrants, have recruited the services of well-trained teachers — at times overqualified for primary-school teaching — from Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya. Mostly single men out to make a windfall, considering the civil war conditions in which they operate, these foreign teachers receive higher pay than they might in their home countries, and in U.S. dollars.

“Are you satisfied with the education they are receiving?”

“Yes, we are, considering.”

“What do poor families do to provide schooling for their children?”

“Sadly, because there is no state, the only other form of school is Koranic.”

Kiin, in the meantime, displays some girlish behavior, giggling at the most unlikely places in their conversation. She also takes hold of Cambara’s hand again, rubbing it, or just continuing to touch her, seeking and making bodily contact with her.

“You can tell me what you think of how, in your opinion, they are doing when you meet my two daughters, born and raised here,” Kiin says. She falls silent when the waiter brings Cambara’s well-done fish and a side dish of spinach.

“The father of the children?”

“We’re still man and wife,” Kiin says, “but we are separated. Like me, he has continued to live in this city, despite the civil war, in preference to leaving and relocating elsewhere as a refugee and then as a holder of the national papers of another country. We are happy here, never mind how others might describe us: as murderers of the clan families fleeing the city, as occupiers of their properties, as robbers, looters, plunderers of the city’s wealth.”

“You’ve been okay?”

“One gets used to all kinds of situations, however awful, to the extent that one will do what one can to survive minimally. If need be, one will become inventive, resourceful, and will find accommodating ways that are on occasion contradictory until one is doing relatively well even in the most terrible of conditions. We are doing well, as you can see. Meanwhile, I am raising my two daughters, and they are, thank God, growing up nicely.”

Because the time does not seem right for Cambara to ask a leading question and Kiin has taken a pause, each of the two women remains absorbed in her silent thoughts.

Kiin says to Cambara, “You have been away from the country for a very long time, haven’t you?”

Cambara feels that Kiin knows a lot more about her than she lets on, most likely because their mutual friend who alerted Kiin of Cambara’s imminent arrival in the city will have filled her in on her life story. Their mutual friend will have described Cambara as a celebrated actor; as a woman whom a man betrayed; a mother grieving over the loss of her only son. A woman of good breeding, Kiin has not even alluded to any of this. There is time yet, though; there is time yet. The waiter retrieves Cambara’s half-eaten meal and brings her half a mango, the size of a football, and cut into squares. Cambara is so sweetly impressed with her first mouthful that even Kiin’s mouth waters, and she asks the waiter to bring her the other half. They eat scoops of it before Kiin dares to break the silence.

Then she continues, “Right now, Somali society is at its most disintegrated. There are so many fault lines that no two Somalis think alike, or are even likely to share a common concern for the nation’s well-being. The men prefer starting wars to talking things over; they prefer going their different ways to coming together and sorting out their differences; they help provoke more fighting and begin shooting, despite the fact that their disagreements are about matters of little or no significance. Men are prone to escalating all minor differences until they become armed confrontations in which many lives are lost, every shoot-out boiling over into unstoppable battles and the battles exploding into wars. I would say my husband and I might not have upgraded our disagreements into a serious falling-out were it not for the uncivil conditions in which we find ourselves. We love each other, my husband and I, but we cannot see our way out of the positions we take. I am a woman and am for peace at all costs; my husband is not for peace at all costs. Living under such a stressful situation day in and day out for years has taken its toll on the way we relate.”

Then, quite unexpectedly and without prior intimation or warning, Kiin remains unspeaking for a long time. She shakes her head, disturbed at the memory of her own and Cambara’s broken home. Then suddenly she sniffs loudly and, with the abruptness of a storm raging, bursts into tears, her cheeks wet with the flood of emotions breaking their banks.

By way of explanation, following a pause, Kiin says, “It is times like these and stories like yours and the many tragedies of other women that are disheartening to listen to, the terrible things men have always done to women and gotten away with. It saddened me when I first learned of your tragic loss, and it breaks my heart now to remember how Wardi neglected your son.”

Neither speaks; the waiter removes the plates.

Kiin says, “I am sorry that I have dropped the weight of my emotions on you in this way, tearfully linking your loss to mine and to all the other women that I know.” She pauses, looking about, and then says, “Men are a dead loss to us, and they father wars, our miseries.”