Nuruddin Farah - Knots

On rejoining the group, the plumber, to cancel out his mates’ jeers, asks Cambara what is in the suitcase. By way of reply, she points at an airline label with a picture of a porter rubbing a bent back that reads “Very Heavy.” The plumber makes as if he will rephrase his question when the driver says to him, “It is rude to ask a lady what she is carrying in her suitcase.”

Then Cambara looks from the driver to the armed escorts and finally at the plumber, wondering aloud if one of them will please come and give her a hand to bring down a second suitcase. The men exchange equivocal glances, none volunteering to go with her, because they all assume that the second suitcase might be bulkier than the first one. Not even her throwaway, singularly charged and defiantly delivered one word, “Men,” her head raised, eyes audaciously expressive, moves any of the men to follow her.

When she rejoins them, swinging the suitcase, proving that it is much lighter than they have hypothesized, all four look embarrassed. No one, however, says anything for a long while. They get into the vehicle, the driver starts the engine, turns the radio on, maneuvering out of the gate, and then stops at the first intersection. He wants to know their destination. She instructs him where to go in a piecemeal fashion, telling him where to turn left just before they hit a bend, suggesting that he slow down prior to his veering right. Not one of the four men has the slightest idea that they are unwitting abettors, four men aiding a woman in her plot to achieve one of her aims. Nor have they the faintest inkling of their involvement in her dicey attempt to recover her family property.

They are well on their way to Cambara’s family house when, the radio still on, a news item about a street-by-street turf war involving one Gudcur and his men against another militia group attracts everyone’s attention. There is total silence inside as they listen to the latest wire dispatches filed by the Horn Afrique journalists close to the scene: Gudcur and his militiamen have lost several of their number, been pushed back a couple of streets, and have had to improvise the construction of a bunker on which they now rely as defense. According to eyewitness reports, Gudcur and his men’s fighting prowess are under a great deal of strain, given the likelihood of another militia faction to their south, whom they dislodged a year earlier, joining forces with their opponents and attacking them from the rear.

When the news ends Cambara asks the driver, the volume of her twitchy voice drowning out the music, if he knows Gudcur.

The driver switches off the radio and says, “I don’t know him personally, but I think that he is a thorough piece of work, objectionable in every possible way, and deserving of the punishment being dished out to him.”

“Give me the background,” she says, feigning total ignorance of the man and his past and current activities. “What’s the fighting about and why now?”

The driver responds, “The fighting is for control of a checkpoint close to the main intersection to a bridge, which is seen as a lucrative means of exacting charges on the road users.”

She knows it sounds naive even as she formulates the question, but she asks it all the same. She says, “Is it lucrative enough to meet his financial needs?”

“He wouldn’t fight if it were not.”

“How many checkpoints would a man like him control to make enough to feed his fighters and live in grand style?” she asks.

“He is a middle-ranking warlord,” the driver explains, “subordinate to the high-ranking strongmen who have earned the right to occupy center stage in the country’s politics and who are invited to every National Reconciliation conference held to provide our failed state with a central government. Gudcur is an ally of the current incumbent of StrongmanSouth’s hub of operations.”

Then one of the armed escorts joins in, throwing his words of contempt as if the object of his derision, Gudcur, were in the vehicle with them, sitting between Cambara and the driver. He says, “We are happy to hear that he is thrashing around, like a fish caught in a net.”

The other armed escort nods his head vigorously in agreement with his mate. The plumber’s closemouthed stance, however, bothers Cambara, because she has no idea what to make of his reticence, why he is tight-lipped. She assumes that it does not happen often that a professional residing in Mogadiscio does not confer empathy or loathing on the activities of a warlord, especially in a street-by-street battle for the taking of a checkpoint, the control of which allows him to impose a duty on every motor vehicle or good that comes through it.

Cambara says, “I hadn’t realized.”

“What? What hadn’t you realized?”

Her heavy breathing is audible in the confines of the truck as she wears an impish grin on her forehead crossing swords with a tangle of fretfulness. This is because she is sick with worry, fearful that, unbeknownst to the four men, she is taking them to Gudcur’s lair.

Scarcely has she prepared to intimate her deep involvement in Jiijo’s life and her very complex connection to Gudcur than she realizes that they are almost there. Drawing comfort from the fact that she is not likely to meet Gudcur there, Cambara presses ahead and then tells the driver to stop opposite but not too close to the gate. Then she and the plumber alight, leaving the driver and the armed escorts to remain in the vehicle, covering them, in case of problems.

She knocks hard on the gate several times before anyone responds. She says, “It is me,” to Jiijo’s apprehensive “Who is it?”

Cambara is relieved that Jiijo is on her own.

When Cambara asks Jiijo where her husband and his fellow qaat -chewing mates are, Jiijo replies that they are out, attending to some important business without saying what this is. Cambara focuses her watchful eyes now on Jiijo in her vigilant attempt to puzzle out if she is telling the truth and now on the plumber to suss out if he knows about Jiijo being Gudcur’s woman. Cambara infers from her cursory, hastily arrived supposition that neither is privy to other’s secrets or identity.

Then she inquires where the children are, and Jiijo explains that someone has “come for them.” Even though she notes that Jiijo does not elaborate, she does not put her on the spot, quiz her on who has “come for them,” or if she, Jiijo, knows to which refuge the children have been spirited away for their own safety. And why has that “someone” left her to fend for herself alone, in spite of her advanced state of pregnancy? Does it mean that insofar as Gudcur is concerned, she is dispensable? Cambara lets Jiijo’s statement stand without comment or further questioning.

Then Jiijo asks, “Who is this man?” sizing up the plumber to determine whether he is friend or foe. “And why have you brought him here?”

Cambara’s answer calms Jiijo’s nerves. She says, “This gentleman is a plumber, and I’ve brought him along so that he will see to it that the plumbing problems in this house are dealt with before you have your baby. I will pay for his labor and all the alterations and expenses, just to make sure your baby is born in a house with clean water and healthy surrounds. He is here today to assess the conditions here and will give me figures and expenses. He will tell me what he needs to do.”

The two women follow on the heels of the plumber into one room, then another and then another, enabling Cambara to see the entirety of the house for the second time, but more luxuriously and without needing to rush.

Half an hour later, everyone at Maanta offers Cambara a hand to help her lug her two suitcases to her rooms. It takes the determined effort of six men to cart them up the steps, past the mezzanine, where they pause for rest, and then eventually into her living quarters. The air conditioner on full blast, she takes a very, very long shower, which she enjoys immensely.