Nuruddin Farah - Knots

Kiin now proceeds into the front room with ease, but when she is invited into Cambara’s inner sanctum and sees a young figure sleeping, she halts in much the same way as she might had she come upon a couple kissing. Cambara urges her to enter, explaining, “He fell asleep, poor thing!” Kiin does so hesitantly, with the care of someone not wanting to disturb; her knees might buckle, she is so cautious. Then she takes the chair that Cambara indicates, turns around, and speaks slowly. She asks, “First things first. How was it with Zaak?” Sprawled on Kiin’s features is a smile charged with warmth as well as concern. In the meantime, her eyes, curious, anxious, search for signs of worry in Cambara’s. She is curious about the boy sleeping on the door. Who he is to Cambara, who has just committed herself to looking after another boy nicknamed SilkHair? And she wonders whether he can hear their conversation. Cambara registers the antsy expression on Kiin’s face, even if she can’t identify its source.

“Glad you’re rid of Zaak?”

“Zaak and his hick mentality,” responds Cambara.

“What are you saying?”

“It is the look of defeat in his eyes all the time we were there,” Cambara explains. “The fellow was disagreeably in his drawers, chewing qaat, his look distant, lethargic, his hands on his hips.” Then she changes tack, and, as though usurping Kiin’s part in the dialog, she takes the plunge and offers what she thinks of as an appropriate way to define a generation of Somali men, lines more appropriate coming from Kiin’s mouth than from hers. Even so, Cambara says, “Zaak is a top-of-the-range loser, typical among the men to whom we’ve entrusted the fate of this nation for far too long. Brainless, the lot of them.”

“From what I hear you’ve handled him superbly.”

“The honest truth is that I derived no pleasure from doing so,” she says, her voice weakening, as if she is suddenly lacking in conviction. Then, after a considerable pause, with the consistency of her voice thickening like quality sauce, she adds, “I find it shocking that he was my husband once. Never mind that the marriage was not consummated and that it was only on paper to facilitate his emigration to Canada.”

“I’ll presume that your entire luggage is here.”

“That’s right.”

Kiin’s tone of voice picks itself up, thanks to a surge in her adrenaline, and she says, “I see that you’ve upgraded the new acquaintance to a higher status, as if he were your own child, or at least he has promoted himself thus. Admirably asleep. Handsome to boot and angelic-looking at that.”

It is not in Cambara’s nature to admit that at times she is a slow thinker. It’s been an exhausting day, hasn’t it? And because of this, she thinks she might not do adequate justice to the question, which, anyhow, she does not much like, considering the insinuation of the phrase “upgrading the new acquaintance to a higher status” and knowing too — although Kiin has no idea that Cambara does, thanks to Raxma — that she, Kiin, or, if you please, the Women’s Network, is footing the bill. Cambara turns all these facts over in her mind not in an attempt to answer the unasked question but to figure out if, in the meantime, Raxma has been in touch to divulge the details of Cambara’s latest assignment: to trace Gacal’s parents.

This is why Cambara asks, lending their dialogue the illusion that a number of unspoken-of matters flow from this very question, “What do you mean ‘upgrading the new acquaintance to a higher status’?”

Next thing she knows, Kiin is trying to defuse the tension. Kiin, smiling, says, “One more mouth to feed won’t present us with a problem. You can be sure of that.”

In her obtuseness, the result, perhaps, of having taken on too much and been on the go ever since her arrival, Cambara looks blankly about herself. Not that she bothers to ask herself if the correct response might be there in view and for the taking, if only she were to search for it. And instead of concentrating on the job at hand, she is so anxious she is at a loss as to what to do or say. She repeats the phrase “one more mouth…” then falls silent. “I am prepared to foot the bill. With a lot of thanks.”

To ease the challenge with which Cambara is failing to cope, Kiin gets to her full height and says, “I can see that you’ve had a long day, and I know that an even much longer night is upon us. So I suggest that you be less demanding of yourself and that you take a break, perhaps even a short nap, then a very hot shower to recharge. Don’t bother yourself about the young fellow you’ve named SilkHair; I’ll see to it that he has all that he requires in the way of something to eat and a place to sleep. At the party then.”

Cambara limps forward toward the bed, eyes unfocused, nostrils broadening, as her jaws open and she cannot help yawning. Suddenly overwhelmed by a memory related to labor pains, she feels as though she is inhaling methyl, and her knees begin to wobble, her eyes smart, her tongue becomes heavy and highly uncooperative, and the floor appears to move from under her feet, because of its unevenness. Her memory of the epidural jab combined with her son’s subsequent death brings on a knockout exhaustion, which, in turn, leads to drowsiness.

Then, before she has figured out what to do, Kiin is gone, and she is alone in her rooms, the door shut, the curtains drawn, and she is sprawled on her bed, ready to crawl into a deep well of sleep. But then she sits up, awake to the presence of someone else breathing close by and sleeping in the same room as she for the first time in months, ever since Dalmar’s death, when she moved out of the bedroom she shared with Wardi. It has been a long day replete with exigencies, some of them more demanding than others, and there is of course Gacal and the difficult choice she has had to make: whether to wake him up and boot him out or accommodate him, given his age and her fondness for him. She listens to his small snore, similar to a pipe being gently blown, the hole partially covered. Cambara debates whether to let Gacal continue his sleep undisturbed, in the end deciding that she wants to have her inner sanctum to herself, with no one else around. She calls his name. He stirs, then suddenly starts, rubbing his eyes sore. Fully alert, he apologizes.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“That’s okay. You were tired.”

“See you later.” He is off, his head downcast.

No regrets though. For there is time yet to know Gacal after Raxma has gotten back to her. Until then, she will act as if she has Arda by her side, preparing to pounce on her for her recklessness, chastising her for her weaknesses, and reminding her, as always, of her failings.

It takes Cambara a long time to fall asleep.

A couple of hours later, Cambara wakes up all atwitter. It is after nine in the evening by her watch, time she has showered and then changed into something of a dress, not necessarily fancy. She is eager to join the evening revel as soon as she can manage it; she is already late. A pity she hadn’t the calmness of mind to ask reception for a wake-up call before sleep overcame her. Now she must step out quickly.

Looking for something to wear, she lights upon a plain caftan, which she puts on in haste. Her hair combed back, head uncovered, she wraps her shoulders in a garbasaar shawl of Indonesian make that boasts an elaborate pattern: peacocks in pursuit of peahens, the one in full display and eager to get done, the others acting coy and delighting in the long-drawn-out courtship. A pair of drop earrings for her ears. For shoes, she has leather sandals, bought in Rome a couple of years ago. She isn’t carrying a handbag, which she thinks of as an ecumbrance, and her hands swing freely as she takes her long strides. Finally, she does an odd thing: She admires her neatly varnished nails, colored gentle purple.