Nuruddin Farah - Knots

“You’ve met my daughters, haven’t you?” Kiin asks. She holds her body upright, her hand busy removing the fluffs and then smoothing the front of her overcoat with fastidious care. She adds after a very thoughtful pause. “Tell me, what are your first impressions?”

“We’ve had the pleasure of talking only to Sumaya, the younger one having shown no interest in chatting with us at all,” Cambara explains. Then she goes on, “Children, I find, have their own way of relating to adults; there is no running away from that. You ask what my impression is. I would say that Sumaya is very much her own girl.”

“Can you imagine Sumaya in a veil, though?”

She looks from Kiin to the ceiling, and before deciding what to say and whether to react to a query of a rhetorical nature, Cambara wonders how much of Kiin there is in the way Sumaya behaves. Better still, if one takes Kiin’s just-ended performance as one’s measure, then surely one might ascribe her daughter’s earlier deportment to playacting, a preteen girl emulating her mother and having nothing to do with sexual charge. But because there is little for Cambara to go on, she opts to remain silent on the subject, suspecting that she might hurt the feelings of her new friend and host. Cambara finds it difficult to imagine Somali women in veils and has forebodings about it as much as she dreads the idea of a little girl being infibulated.

Then she sees Gacal and so does Kiin.

“Hello, what’re you doing here?” Cambara asks.

“I am here,” Gacal says cheekily.

Kiin says, with a touch of surprise in her voice, “Where have you just come from, young fellow?” She is friendly but firm, insisting that he give an immediate response. When he doesn’t, she goes on, “I am asking what a charming and happy-looking fellow is doing in the family part of our house? I hope you have an explanation,” she says, her sweeping gaze taking in Cambara, at whom she closes her right eye briefly, as if in a signal.

Neither Cambara nor Gacal knows how to interpret the wink. Is it accidental, or is she doing it in jest? Alternatively, is she communicating something that is eluding both? Moreover, Gacal is discomfited; he fidgets, eyes shifty, mouth opening and closing, like a baby feeding. Not speaking, he allows the smirk to spread, then takes his time before attempting to do something about removing it. Cambara, assuming that Kiin, in all likelihood, has forgotten that she has spoken of the boy whom she will bring to lunch, makes as if she will intervene.

Kiin says, “He can speak for himself. He has a tongue, and a sharp one, I bet.”

Gacal says nothing, does nothing.

“What’s your answer?

“What’s the question?”

“Where have you been?”

“I’ve been here and there.”

“Where is here and where is there?” Kiin is crotchety, the surfeit of her ill humor overflowing.

Neither Cambara nor Gacal moves; they listen.

Kiin continues, “Myself, I have had the displeasure to put on a khimaar and a shukka today to appease a posse of men in saintly robes: my father-in-law and his cronies, who deigned to command me to present myself before them. Do you know the topic of our discussion? The custody of my two daughters. In other words, am I fit enough to mother them in the way tradition demands? I wore the khimaar and the shukka not because I like doing so but because I hadn’t the guts to displease them. Who are they to question my ability to raise my daughters? You might as well ask. And if I am found to be unfit, then they will award the custody of my children to their stepmother, my estranged husband’s older sister, a barren woman. Now, why am I telling you this? I am doing so because I want you to get used to doing things from which you may not derive the slightest pleasure but which will help you get some purchase on what you most need: a place you call home, food to eat, a school, clothes, and someone’s affections. We are charitable to you now, but to remain in our good graces, you have to work at it, on occasion doing things that bore you, that annoy you.”

Kiin, looking as though drained of energy, speaking; Cambara, a little clouded in the eyes, listening for the silences between the unsaid words. Gacal doesn’t appear affected one way or the other. Attentive like a theater enthusiast watching a play, he keeps his eyes focused on Kiin, his ears intently pricked.

Kiin asks him, “How old are you?”

“I am old,” he replies.

“How old is old?”

“I am as old as you want me to be.”

Cambara steps in and explains who Gacal is. “Remember, he is the boy I said I would bring to have lunch and, if possible, watch Pinocchio with Sumaya and Nuura,” she says. Then she turns to him, “Why have you come away from watching the movie?”

“Because I’ve seen it endless times,” he says.

“Where?”

“In our house.”

Cambara takes note of this fact, reminding herself that Gacal is piling up mystery upon mystery. Kiin asks, “When?”

“A lifetime ago,” replies Gacal.

Kiin appears troubled and tired-looking, with a prominent “I can’t be bothered” expression. It strikes Cambara that she is a woman uncertain of what she wants to see, what she wants to hear, or what subject to discuss. As for Gacal, Cambara interprets his countenance as being crowded with contradictory messages. It puts her in mind of a weed-infested rose bed. Where do you start? Where do you end?

Cambara decides to end the conversation, which is going nowhere, if only to allow Kiin and her enough time to have lunch and talk. She says to Kiin, “Please, can we have him fed? I am sure he won’t mind eating in the kitchen.”

Kiin rings a bell, and she and Cambara wait.

Gacal bows a gentle bow, expectantly silent.

A very long silence follows, into which a young woman — maybe house help to judge from the shabbiness of her clothes — appears, and an eerie quiet takes hold. All eyes turn to the new arrival, Kiin and Cambara watching her steady shuffle as she makes slow progress, chameleonlike.

Something about the house help irritates Kiin, who sounds irked. “If you are here about our lunch, then get a move on and hurry. Take away this young fellow and have him fed. In the kitchen. My friend and I will eat in the veranda. Bring everything on trays. Remember to bring us cloth napkins. No paper napkins, please. I do not like paper napkins, and I hate those who serve them to my guests or me. As I’ve said, get a move on. Hurry. I have a guest to entertain and an evening party to organize too at the restaurant. So get a move on. Be quick.”

The house help coaxes a quickening of pace from the potential that must have always been there, tapping into it. Likewise Gacal, who, enlivened, bestirs himself and stands up with the speed of somebody a black ant has stung on his posterior. He scampers hurriedly after the young girl, presumably to the kitchen.

Kiin leading and Cambara following, they walk down a corridor, past the room where Sumaya and Nuura are watching Pinocchio. The loud volume puts her in mind of cheap motels where long-term-residence clients play video all day to kill time. The spacious veranda, which is handsomely prepared in all aspects, opens onto the garden in the back, its walls grown with ivy, the couches in colorful Baidoa material.

The drinks come in less time than it has taken Kiin and Cambara to exchange a glance and a few words. Served by no other than Gacal, who is now wearing an apron, the chilled lassi tastes divine to Cambara. A few minutes later, their lunches are on trays, and the cloth napkins folded the way they do at fancy restaurants.

Having a long, drawn-out lunch is of the essence when you want to relax, and since the idea is for them to talk, undisturbed, Kiin speaking and Cambara mostly listening, while Sumaya and Nuura watch Pinocchio and Gacal eats in the kitchen, probably all on his own. Cambara and Kiin are perhaps looking forward to having their siesta in their respective rooms later. Kiin is the kind of friend, Cambara thinks, who has more time for others than for her own worries. Until now she has never even alluded to what must be bothering her — the likelihood of losing custody of her two daughters.