Nuruddin Farah - Knots

Cambara draws herself up to her full height after an arduous workout in her rooms, the first serious exercise session since her arrival. When she thinks of it, breathing laboriously and perspiring profusely, she can’t get over the fact that she has not been toning up her body to remain fit, in case she gets into a touch-and-go physical combat and has to karate-kick two or more armed thugs to stave them off — in short, to save her own life. Of late, some of the militiamen, having run out of victims with the wherewithal to pay them large sums of cash, have resorted either to becoming pirates on the high seas or to taking hostages on land and demanding huge ransoms while they keep their prey incommunicado. In such a situation, it is convenient if one is in good trim. She has seen enough of the militiamen to know they are not fighting fit. Even though she is pleased with the way things have gone up to now, she is possessed of understandable worries, many of them to do with her fear that she may not be able to withstand the pressures building up within and without her or may falter and then come apart at the seams at the wrong moment. She believes it prudent to train her mind and, for that matter, tone up her body for the day when she may crack up or when the luck that has sustained her may run out — and then what? She feels that she can be on top of things if, in addition to being strong of body and mind, she manages to impose some order on her activities.

In her effort to reimpose a healthy routine she sweats herself to exhaustion. Lacking a treadmill and the other sports facilities to which she is accustomed at home, and in view of the fact that she cannot imagine jogging down the dirt roads of the potholed city lest she become a shooting target of some gun-crazy youth, she stretches every muscle until she cannot stand the pain anymore. Moreover, to keep abreast of unfolding events, she has the radio on, anxiously expecting to hear the worst news: that Gudcur has prevailed in his campaign against his warring rivals. So far, all indications are that he will be triumphing over his opponents, who are in retreat, vacating territories they conquered and claiming this to be part of their strategic withdrawal.

She is in a sweat, preoccupied that she might be implicating an innocent man, the plumber, and inculpating Kiin’s driver and security guards, who have so far shown her nothing but kindness. It worries her that she is getting Kiin, her newfound friend, involved in her dodgy affairs without leveling with her. A fresh panic sets in when, in a calm moment, she figures out what it will mean for all the parties concerned if in a day or two Gudcur triumphs over his competitors, who are also his clansmen and were at one time close allies, fighting hand in hand and living out of one another’s thieving pockets. A decisive victory will no doubt result in raising Gudcur’s self-confidence, thereby increasing his aplomb and, because of it, furthering his chances of conquering more territories and of extending his reign beyond his current domain. For Cambara, this can only spell insurmountable doom.

A grave shock, as disheartening as it must be debilitating, runs through her body the instant she realizes what Gudcur’s victory implies. To fight off the sense of gloom that is about to engulf her and also to make sure that it doesn’t weigh her down or get her worked up into a state of consternation, Cambara decides that it is best that she give Kiin a version of the events very close in general outline to the truth. Of course, she will do the best she can and, if need be, stretch the mode of telling it the way she knows best, adjusting the narration here and expanding on it there, especially where it is pliable, and naturally trimming it whenever the tale does not yield, because it lacks suppleness within its original material.

All the same, she perspires heavily, despite the cool air-conditioning in the room. Feeling tired, her sweatshirt sticking to her back, she paces to the extreme ends of the room on tiptoe. She looks at herself in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door; tall. She admires what she sees: a curvaceous body, shapely waist, breasts firm for a woman her age.

With her adrenaline in overdrive, she is thinking how sad it will make her if, untold because distrusted, Kiin not only does not buy into the version Cambara feeds her but also uncovers that she has misled her. Cambara, meanwhile, pictures herself trying to light-foot her way across a city peopled with misbegotten miscreants at the very time when whatever empathy Kiin has had for Cambara comes to an untrusting end. Where will she go then? From whom will she seek help? Not from Zaak, who will most likely turn his back on her too; nor from Bile and Dajaal, two men she hardly knows. Her only hope is Kiin, with whom she thinks she shares a special empathy, even if this affinity remains undefined. Maybe it is this chemistry that each recognizes in the other. Cambara senses an onrush of unease when she imagines the woebegone scenario in which, having uncovered Cambara’s untruths, Kiin shows her out: out of the hotel, out of her life, all contacts severed. How weak the legs of untruths; how sturdy the legs of truth, how much faster they run than falsehood, which never gains on them. This projection results in her decision to confide in Kiin, to tell her what she is all about, why she is in the country, hiring plumbers, and so on. One woman counting on another, a woman yoked to another, a woman trusting another, a woman choosing to be truthful to another in the service of a higher ideal: of peace, of communal harmony.

What should she tell the plumber, who is much more likely than anyone else is, including her, to become a potential victim, if Gudcur, in a moment of ire, kills? What explanation should she give Zaak if he asks why, even though she is no longer putting up with him, she continues meddling with his life? He will probably remind her of her changing his wardrobe and his dressing style, her making him wear clothes with a content higher in cotton than polyester. Before parting and divorcing, Zaak will complain that she made him exchange his austere living for a high-flying life of staying up till the small hours of the night, of mornings spent lying in, of behaving in a cavalier manner when it came to expenses, seldom worrying as if every day dawned bearing its special gift. If he takes this line with her, then she will remind him that she has ceased to be the woman he used to know from the instant she unloaded him and that in her reinvented self, she cares less about what he wears, more about her own problems.

Taking the plumber to her family’s property without serious thought to the consequences of her action has made Cambara’s commitment a more perilous concern. There is no running away from it, and there is no turning back either. She soaks up a few motionless seconds as she considers the matter. Meanwhile, she occupies her fidgety hands with an activity that she has been meaning to undertake: She bothers a blackhead, picking at it until she has almost removed it; then plucks at her armpit hair with the concentration of a woman applying eye pencil.

Someone starts the engine of a car, revving it, and then reverses it out through the gate, the harshness of the gear grating on her nerves. Cambara looks at her watch and, deciding it is time to choose what to wear for the evening, she pulls out the suitcase in which she has put her few changes of clothing. She has no difficulty choosing what to wear: a beautiful sleeveless up-and-down linen dress she received as a gift from her mother, who it bought it from a mainly African shopping mall in Toronto on her last visit before Cambara went away. She admires the dress, feeling it, her hand going against the grain, now along with it, and finally placing the top portion of it on the bed, studying the denkyem, the Ashanti symbol that the tailor sewed into it, the embroidery adding a natural balance and beauty to the material, its color close to her own.