Nuruddin Farah - Knots

Kiin has put the phone on a speaker system, allowing Cambara to listen in. She explains, in a whispered aside, that she is talking to Farxia, a medical doctor at a clinic who is closing for the day. Farxia asks Kiin if there is an emergency and if her presence at the hotel is of immediate necessity. In reply, Kiin says that everything is okay with her, with Cambara too. At first, Kiin is hesitant, as if she has changed her mind about sharing whatever it is that has been bothering her and then tries lamely to assure Farxia that “things are all right, actually.”

Farxia, her voice more high-pitched than before, says, “I doubt if whatever has made you call me on the emergency line can wait, even though things are all right, actually.”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow evening,” Kiin says.

“I urge you not to postpone talking to me until tomorrow,” Farxia says. “So talk and talk now.”

At Farxia’s insistence, Kiin, who thinks aloud, most likely for Cambara’s benefit, wonders whether the esteemed doctor will accommodate a daring thought. Kiin takes a long time to discuss what is on her mind, even though Cambara believes that, whatever it is, no one will suspect Kiin of taking leave of her senses.

“Don’t play hard to get, Kiin.”

“I am not.”

“Then come clean, and fast,” commands Farxia.

Kiin obliges, saying, “Do you or one of your junior colleagues at the clinic have time to make a home visit?”

“Right away?”

“Better still,” Kiin says, the tone of her voice suggesting someone thinking on her feet, quick, capable of improving on ideas that are even more daring. “Do you have an ambulance and staff to help fetch a heavily pregnant woman and take her to your clinic?”

“Where is the pregnant woman?”

Kiin then suggests that Farxia wait at the clinic for her driver to come with a note from her, giving the pregnant woman’s name and details. The driver will lead the ambulance to the house where the said woman is.

“Will do,” Farxia says.

Cambara cannot help being impressed with how fast Kiin has sunk the future of her entire life and business by taking the single most daring step: emptying the family house of the only remaining proof of Gudcur’s occupancy. When she thinks how she is beholden to Kiin for doing what she has done, she is at a loss for words. Nor will the damp stains silhouetted against the ceiling and from which Kiin received inspiration earlier give her counsel, telling her what to do.

“One dealt with,” Kiin says, “another to go.”

Something sets Cambara off, and, thinking ahead, she starts to wonder how sad she will be if things go wrong. After all, that means that she has endangered Kiin’s and her daughters’ lives, not to mention her hotel business, the lady doctor, whom she has not met, and her colleagues, staff, and clinic. She shakes, feeling as light as a leaf blowing in the sea breeze, with the tremor that has its beginning in worry.

“My second effort has to do with women, the theater, and an abiding commitment to peace,” Cambara says. “Let me affirm that I feel certain that with your assistance, I will not have any difficulty achieving the things I’ve set my mind to.”

“Be specific,” Kiin says. “How can I be of help?”

Cambara settles in to the agreeable feeling of Kiin sorting out all her problems. She addresses herself to difficulties that she is likely to encounter when she starts to get down to the business of putting on a play in a country no longer familiar with this mode of entertainment. She goes on, “In fact, this is why I’ve wanted to meet a carpenter so I can construct a stage and help make the masks I’ve designed for it. I need an especially talented carpenter who can double as a joiner and who is bold in his or her interpretation of my sketches.”

Kiin strikes a charming pose, visibly pleased. “I know such a person,” she says.

“Here in this city?”

“He is Irish and I know him well.”

“Does he live in Mogadiscio?”

“He’s lived here for a number of years, has adopted Somalia as his own and, what is more, survived it.”

“What’s an Irishman doing here?”

“That’s a long story.”

“What is his name?”

“Seamus.”

Early the next morning, at eight o’clock, Cambara sits alone at a table in the hotel restaurant with her large writing pad open before her, studying her scribblings and then revising them, now adding and now deleting. She does this in the halfhearted way a professor not interested in what she is reading peruses a student’s text. She turns the pages of the pad, which boast of chicken scratches only she can decipher, among them a sketch, in the form of a diagram for a play that she has worked on more off than on for several years; she thinks it will be ideal to produce the play here. She hopes that agreeing to put on a puppet theater will not only improve her chances of artistic success but also release her from her feel-bad factor, in terms of never having pulled off staging her own work.

She wishes she could work out what has prompted Kiin to talk readily, knowingly, and convincingly about Cambara’s passion in producing a play for peace in Mogadiscio. She guesses that Raxma, their mutual friend, has most likely been in touch, intimating Cambara’s keenness, which, as Arda has put it, “is generated by an obsession to make a name for herself at the same time as an actor and a playwright.” To date, she has kept her dream alive but has little to show for it, apart from some amateur efforts of which she can’t be proud. Not to worry about anything in connection with her artistic pursuit, though, for that can wait until she has scored successes on other fronts; then, she feels certain, agreeing to produce a play is going to be a sinecure, no sweat.

She can only imagine how much pleasure it will be if Gudcur comes back from the fighting wounded or is fatally injured and dies; then she will be in a much better position. As is her wont, she starts to count her chicks before her eggs hatch and thinks ahead to the day when she may use the family property’s banquet hall as her rehearsal site. With Gudcur gone, his fighters no longer posing a threat to her plans, and Jiijo out of the way and having her baby in hospital — in view of the arrangements that are afoot, thanks to Kiin and Farxia — Cambara is convinced she will make headway fast. She interprets her dream at dawn, in which she saw several hawks overpowering the hyenas whom they were battling, as meaning that she will outsmart her opponents, whoever they are and achieve her aim, whatever that turns out to be.

She reminds herself that, according to one of the Horn Afrique radio correspondents who filed his dispatch at seven in the morning, Gudcur’s men have been sent packing, are on the retreat, having been hustled out of several more checkpoints. Moreover, unconfirmed more up-to-date bulletins attributed to other news agencies allude to the heavy toll of dead and injured among his men. However, in view of the fact that no reporter mentions seeing Gudcur in person, the hearsay that he is dead or at least badly hurt is gaining credibility, fueled by the rumor that his deputy is acting as if he is unmistakably in charge. At one point during the interview, Gudcur’s second-in-command let it slip that he is leading the campaign, now faltering, because of a faulty command structure. She sees the stand-in questioning Gudcur’s authority not so much as evidence of a humiliating rout but as indisputable proof of his powerlessness.

Fretful, she sits up, smiling in genuine welcome as the waiter arrives with an item of her breakfast: two slices of mango prepared the way Mogadiscians like them. Her mouth watering, she admires the sweet golden fruit that is cut in equal halves, the flat, rounded stone removed, the fleshy portion segmented, with a knife, into sections, ready for her to eat. When the waiter does not move, as though expecting her to say something, Cambara tells him not to bother bringing her the second dish, one of liver, to be eaten with canjeero -pancake, a favorite among middle-class Mogadiscians. In response to his gentle attempt to persuade her against her decision—“It is our specialty, liver and pancake,” he says — she explains that she doubts if she has the stomach for it. “Not this morning,” she adds.