Nuruddin Farah - Knots

Cambara asks Farxia, “How is Bile, do you know?”

“He has been heavy of heart, ever since Raasta departed,” Farxia says. “Lonely in his melancholy, he falls deeper and frequently into a sense of depression, refusing to come to terms with how things are.”

Cambara sinks into a slouch, exhausted, silent.

Cambara wakes up early the following morning to a noise already familiar to her from a dream just before dawn, a dream in which the clamor of several people eating is the predominant din. Now, after rising from another brief nap, she can hear the clamor of knives and forks clashing, the raucous cacophony of crockery, and, in the background, the clanging plates against saucers and other tableware being washed and stacked together in a chaotic manner.

In her dream, Cambara has prepared a special dinner: prawn cocktails; a fish platter composed of freshwater cockles, eaten with lemon and chili sauce; calamari fried in butter and smothered in garlic and herbs; and a dish of lemon sole with rice and veggies. There are three other people: Wardi, who occupies one head of the table, which is big enough to seat twenty; Dalmar, who sits very close to her, their bodies touching; and Arda, who is at the other head of the table. There is not much in the way of conversation, and what there is does not flow at all, with Dalmar and Arda trying to keep it going, if only because they cannot stand the weighty silence. Wardi delights in making poisonous remarks meant not so much to annoy her as to insult all three of them. His look in Cambara’s direction has in it only contempt; that in Arda’s, a mere challenge; that in Dalmar’s, a mix of betrayal and disparagement. Clearly annoyed, she can’t wait for this travesty of a family dinner to end. All the while, she shows Wardi her clenched fist, vowing to hit him as soon as Arda is gone, Dalmar is asleep in his room, and the two of them are alone.

Not only does Cambara refuse to put a good face on the matter and engage her mother or son in pointless talk, but she also does not touch her favorite food, the first time she remembers doing so. In contrast, Wardi is garrulously jittery, brazenly telling an improper joke about half a dozen Italians from a hick town in Sicily who, sharing a house in the suburbs of Milan, hire the services of a whore. Arda appeals to his sense of decorum, but Wardi does not heed her pleas, and just as he is about to launch into telling yet another gag, Arda says, the tone of her voice firm and uncouth, “That’s enough. No more of this in the presence of Dalmar.”

Wardi turns on his mother-in-law and makes as if he will challenge her. No sooner has he uttered the first syllable of a long word than his lips move soundlessly like that of a fish biting bait, his eyes dilate to the point of popping out of their sockets, his jaw drops, and he foams at the mouth. Apparently, Wardi is having a seizure, the fit of an epileptic. He ceases breathing altogether and his muscles stiffen, hard as the back of the chair he is sitting on. Arda looks from him to Cambara, who just nods. Whereupon, with a huge, knowing smile brightening his face, Dalmar makes the V sign. Then he says to Cambara, “You know, Mummy, I love you, love you, no matter what.”

“I love you too, my sweet darling.”

It is when Dalmar gets up to hug his mother, pulling her toward him, and then his grandmother, snuffling loudly preparatory to a crying fit, which is theatrical to the point of having been rehearsed, that Wardi falls off his chair. No one moves; no one speaks for a long time, the silence contagiously spreading so that even Dalmar hasn’t the boldness to break it. The first to stir, Dalmar changes his position with the quietness of someone aware of other presences to which he defers.

Dalmar says, “What do we do now?”

Cambara takes his hand, as if consoling him.

Arda asks Cambara, “How do you explain?”

“Allergy.”

Cambara takes large mouthfuls of her food for the first time and encourages her son and her mother to resume eating theirs.

“No idea he was allergic to fish,” from Arda.

Cambara does not accord him even a single look in his direction now that he lies on the floor, rigor mortis ruling — she hates him so. “He’s died not knowing that he is allergic to fish, the fool.”

“How did you come to know of it?” Arda asks.

“I’ve my ways of knowing.”

The dogged sense of remorse makes Dalmar so restless that he rises from his chair and crouches by Wardi, checking his pulse and reporting, “No beating. Mummy, he’s gone cold. And look at his body: bloodless yellow. What do we do with him?”

“Dalmar is right. What do we do now?” Arda asks.

Cambara, her held-in grin making her lips seem smaller and her whole face stiff, pulls out her mobile phone and dials a number. To the woman at the other end, she says, “Susannah, do come and pick up your Wardi. He is on the floor, having a fit of the fatal kind, and we do not know what to do.”

The voice says, “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Cambara says to Arda and Dalmar, “There. Done.”

Dalmar walks over to where Wardi’s corpse lies coiled on the floor, and he kicks him, not once but two, three times in quick succession. Furious at him, Cambara gives him a dressing down, saying, “You must treat his dead body with respect. He is your father.”

He retorts, “But he used to hit me. Remember?”

Cambara gets a telling-off from Arda, who says, “It’s your fault. Everything. Dalmar’s ill-mannered behavior. Wardi’s ill will toward us all.”

The doorbell rings. As she gets up, steadies herself, and goes toward the door, she announces, “It’s Susannah come to pick up her darling dead.”

The door opens, the sun in her eyes. Susannah not there, she turns to say something to Dalmar and Arda, neither of whom is there.

Cambara blinks the dream away.

She wakes up in her room at Hotel Maanta in Mogadiscio in an apparent sweat over what she has done: killed in hate, out of revenge. Disturbed, she takes a deep breath, looks about the room, and, dropping into a state of bleary-eyed conundrum, wonders if a dream such as the one she has just had will have redeemed her from her desire to commit murder.

Half an hour later, her commitment to creating a family to replace the dysfunctional one she did away with in the dream strengthens with the sudden coming into view of Gacal and SilkHair, who are deep in amicable discussion. She watches them from her vantage point in the café, where she is consuming her first order of breakfast: two slices of mango and a pot of coffee. With her free hand, she is leafing through the text of her play, of which she intends to give a copy later to Gacal. She doesn’t know enough about SilkHair, who hasn’t yet told her his story. There is time, time to hear from Raxma, who is at her investigative best, probing, digging. No need to rush. All the same, she reckons that SilkHair is not much of a reader; possibly, he has never been to a school in the proper sense of the term. “We’ll see,” she says to herself aloud.

As she looks shortsightedly at them, almost missing a heartbeat, her breathing labored, she sits up, too eager to welcome them. She stops short of calling out to them by name and waits, half rising from her seat, with her coffee mug held up and close to her chin but tilted a little forward, nearly tipping. She thinks of SilkHair and Gacal as forming the nub of her alternative family, with which she might yet succeed in replacing the one that died with Dalmar. Tears of emotion flood her eyes at the memory of the wonderful times spent in loving, raising, teaching, mothering Dalmar. In her current reassessment, she will admit that she learned from her Dalmar as much as she taught him. More to the present point, she is getting to know a lot about herself, because of her dealings with Gacal and SilkHair, who are assisting her in her effort to reassess her self-worth as a grieving mother.