Nuruddin Farah - Knots

She remembers the wisdom behind the Ashanti symbol; she remembers her mother telling her about the Ashanti proverb based on the system. According to her mother, the saying implies that even though the crocodile lives in water and has the enviable ability to stay on land too, the fact is it does breathe water; it breathes air. She interprets the symbol as meaning that like the crocodile, which lives in and off the bounty of water and the land surrounding it, she, Cambara, inhabits two contradictory states of mind: She dwells in peace even if the menacing closeness to the attrition that defines Somalia engulfs her. That is to say, she must adapt to the conditions that obtain in the city where she is and confront the situations that abound with uncomplaining hardiness, poised for worse scenarios, including death. She commends herself for reconciling herself to the continuously altering circumstances that are as formidably strenuous as they are dangerous. Ergo, she will put on the dress in deference to her acute sense of adaptability.

She has hardly had the time to shower when there is a gentle tap on the door. Cambara stays stock still, answering only when the person knocks several more times, every time meeker than before. She asks, “Who is it?”

“It is me,” says a voice. “Kiin.”

A spate of questions about where Cambara took Kiin’s driver, bodyguards, and the plumber to whom she has introduced her invade Cambara’s mind. These questions, coming as they do in the form of a deluge, each flowing from a tributary that brims over into an agitated river of self-doubts, fluster her. Praying that all is well with everyone who went in that vehicle with her, and her voice almost breaking, Cambara says, “Just give me a moment, please.”

“No need to open the door,” says Kiin. “I’ve come to find out how you are doing and to tell you that it is teatime and that I am at the café. So come and join me whenever you are ready.”

Cambara opens the door, dressed in her linen outfit with the denkyem symbol embroidered into it.

On letting Kiin enter, Cambara observes, as if for the first time, that her rooms are host to the inevitable mess travelers create, with a bevy of plans they do not follow through on for one reason or another, when there are more suitcases and little in the way of a sense of how best to unpack and when. Strewn around on the floors in both rooms and on the beds therein are books of coffee-table dimensions and other paraphernalia that indicate the current occupant’s abiding passion for masks and theater, including a couple of miniature masks of wood. Kiin takes keen interest in the books, opening an illustrated one designed to help bring such a play to the stage before moving away and focusing first on the masks, which she picks up and fingers, her fervor evident, and then a flimsy book, the size of a pamphlet, titled The Eagle and the Chickens.

From the expression on her face — open as though with a vista of possibilities — Kiin is apparently enthused about puppet theater and all of Cambara’s material. “I wonder if you will tell me about all of this — if you have plans that I should know about and can help you with, that we, the Women’s Network, can help you with. Perhaps you would consider putting on a play? The network could fund it. Would you? For peace? About peace? For women?”

“Nothing will give me more pleasure,” Cambara says, “given the opportunity and provided that we succeed in achieving our aims.”

Kiin does the high five, saying, “That’s great.”

Chuffed, Cambara says breatlessly, “Thanks.” This is her dream project.

In the silence, Cambara puckers her forehead, the wrinkles calling Kiin’s attention to the unwashed sweat resulting from Cambara’s strenuous workout a few minutes earlier.

“So tell me all,” says Kiin in an exhausted afternoon-without-siesta voice. “Where have you been to? And have you achieved your purpose?”

Cambara replies with sangfroid, never letting on that she has rehearsed her responses to the possible questions that Kiin might put to her at the first opportunity. She tells her everything with the judicious shrewdness of a culprit placing herself at a remove from a misdeed without insisting on the primacy of her innocence.

“Who is Jiijo to you?”

Cambara grows restive before asking Kiin, “Do you know Jiijo?”

Kiin’s reply that she does not know her makes Cambara puzzle over her meaning. Neither speaks for a long time.

“Your escorts have chatted to her.”

Not that Cambara is aware that they and Jiijo have exchanged a single word. Perhaps they sneaked in and had a word with her when she was showing the plumber the toilets and the bathrooms upstairs.

“What has she told them?”

With the prospect of receiving an answer to her question coming to nought, Cambara realizes that Kiin is probably showing her that she too can hold back as much valuable information as Cambara has withheld from her. Is this a token of the challenging times, when no one trusts another enough to share a bit of news that is essential to both?

“What about Gudcur?” Kiin asks.

“What about him?”

Kiin says, “Tell me why you are interested in the property that he has occupied for a very long time and that he uses as his ‘family’ home. Apart from the fact that it is yours. That goes without saying.”

Then she trains her inhospitable look on Cambara, into whose eyes she stares, drilling deep into an area no one has ever reached. Kiin’s otherworldly glare puts the fear of the devil into her. This, together with the expectant silence and her restlessness, startles Cambara. When Kiin prods her with more questions, formulating them differently but essentially keeping to the same format, Cambara sits up as if a sharp metal object has pricked her; she wears the pained expression of someone who has no idea what is happening to her.

Then she tells Kiin everything, beginning with her son’s death, the irreconcilable fissure between her and Wardi. Cambara informs how the rift led her to leave and come to Mogadiscio, in the belief that mourning her loss will make a clement sense only if she involves herself at the same time in repairing her relationship with the country, to whose well-being she has never contributed in any direct way.

“How do you intend to go about mending the rapport?” Kiin asks.

Cambara responds that there are two sides to her endeavor, both personal. Even though she hopes that she can achieve the recovery of her family’s property, which she has planned to do all on her own without involving others directly, the truth is she has dragged others into it.

“Remind me something, please do,” Kiin requests, and she hitches up her head scarf, tucking back in a lock of hair that has come undone. “How advanced is Jiijo’s pregnancy?”

“Eight months plus.”

“Let me get this right,” Kiin goes on. “You say that the children have been sent away for their safety and that she, Jiijo, is alone in the house, as we speak, because Gudcur is engaged in the street-by-street battle to recover the territory he has lost?”

“So far as I am aware of the situation, yes.”

She watches, with eagerness, as Kiin turns an idea over in her head, silent. Cambara suspects Kiin of entertaining a daring thought, and wonders if or when her newfound friend might share her conclusions once she has drawn them.

“What’s on your mind?” Cambara asks.

Kiin looks away and up at the ceiling, as if the boards might reveal some secret message to her. Then, nodding in the gesture of someone who has finally unraveled a mystery, she pulls out her mobile, punches in a number, and waits for a long time. When the phone is answered, Kiin asks of the person with the shrill voice, “Where are you, Farxia dear, and how busy are you?”