Nuruddin Farah - Knots

Cambara’s spirits soar on the winds of optimism, gliding with a sense of elation at imagining how she might ultimately accomplish one of her main aims: to repair several of the wrongs to which the societies of men have subjected women through the ages — in her case, Wardi — thanks to the intervention of the Women’s Network, with Kiin at its head, decidedly steering it to actionable success. She doubts if her goodwill and inner strength could stir compunction in the heart of a Wardi as she might in those of the Dajaals, Seamuses, and Biles of this world. These strike her as having stopped fibbing or faffing about and have started to fine-tune their act. Is it because they are reconstructed men, able to express their humanness in a way that is beneficial to all? Not Wardi; no humanness in him, none whatsoever.

The first to see her, SilkHair gives a nudge to Gacal and, pointing at Cambara with the barely visible movement of his head, comes toward her with the rough-hewn attitude of someone not given to restraining his impulses. Gacal, for his part, is content to remain where he is and to wave in salutation. Cambara asks herself if he is waiting to be invited or if he is upset, because he felt affronted by the manner in which she booted him out of her room yesterday evening. There is nothing standoffish about Gacal’s staying behind, she concludes, from where she is, she can sense the tremor of a smile forming.

Meanwhile, she turns her attention to SilkHair, who is lobbing his body forward with the speed of a tennis player eager to get on with the game. He is at her side before she has settled on what to say to him. But what is she to do, what is she to say? Open her arms for a quick hug? Ask him what he has done with his time since their last encounter? He steps back, his Adam’s apple busy making swallowing noises and his gaze focusing on her breakfast, so she invites him to order something to eat. With SilkHair seated and helping himself to one of her mangoes, she summons Gacal to join them. Gacal inserts himself in the space left untaken between her and SilkHair and leans forward as if he might receive a peck. Cambara gives his thigh a gentle pat and then pushes her remaining slice of mango toward him. He behaves as a well-bred boy of his age who has just eaten and who is not worried about his next meal.

He says, “Thanks. We’ve had breakfast.”

His cheeks mango-stained and his chin dripping with the mature yellow juice of the fruit, SilkHair eventually gives in to his gluttony. He pulls the remaining slice toward him without Cambara saying that he might and pounces on it with equal enthusiasm.

She says to Gacal, “What did you have?”

Gacal replies, “Porridge.”

“What was it like?”

“Filling,” he says.

“How has it been then, your first night?”

Gacal and SilkHair talk in tandem, their choice of words pointing her to their different dispositions, Gacal pronouncing it as “passable,” in contrast to SilkHair, who describes his experience thus: “So far it has been wonderful.” Cambara thinks that it is too early in the day to arrive at a conclusion about their character, but she stores these observations in her memory for future consideration.

She snaps her fingers, and the waiter takes his time coming, his unwillingness, perhaps to serve the two boys, discernible in his body language. He smiles at her, bowing his head slightly. But when he turns his face to speak to them, his expression assumes a hostility that has not been there before; his eyes harden; his choice of idiom rough and ready.

Obviously offended, Gacal looks from the waiter to Cambara, if only to indicate that, to his credit, he is sharing his frustrations with her in submissive silence, not rising to it. Not that SilkHair is unaware of what is happening, but he hurries to empty his face of an expression that might allow anyone to interpret it in any way before placing his order of breakfast: a large glass of orange juice, liver, and pancake. He is the kind of boy—“another mouth to feed”—who has known what it is like to kill for his meals. Gacal wants “Nothing for the moment,” and he might as well have added the phrase “from that waiter.”

“What did you do last night?” she asks them.

SilkHair puts his index finger close to his lips in the attitude of someone embarrassed to speak about something; he also avoids making eye contact with her. Cambara cannot help assuming that the boys went somewhere or did something of which SilkHair is not proud in the light of day. When she tries to decode its meaning, that is not the impression she gets from training her gaze on Gacal. Gacal is defiant, in that he stares back at her as though he is daring her to turn her attention to him.

“Did you go somewhere last night?”

“We went to see a movie,” Gacal says.

“What sort of movie? Where?”

Gacal explains that they went to a building that once belonged to the defunct state, namely the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where there is a hall with two ends, each with a video screen. SilkHair saw a Hindi movie dubbed into Somali at one end, then a Korean kung fu film whose soundtrack had also been rendered into Somali, never mind that it was done very badly, hastily, and cheaply too. He goes on, “Myself, I watched a different sort of movie in the end of the hall.”

“And you enjoyed it?”

“Very much.”

“What was it called, the film you saw?”

“I don’t recall the name.”

“What was it about?”

SilkHair strikes her as someone easier in his mind as soon as the waiter put his breakfast in front of him. He tucks into it promptly, she thinks, not because he is hungry, but in great part because he is not accustomed to having this kind of food. Unlike Gacal, he does not cut a bashful figure in her presence. Which leads her to conclude that Gacal knows more than he is letting on.

“I am waiting,” she eggs Gacal on.

Gacal decoys her curiosity, baiting and turning it subtly away from the question for which he has not provided an answer to his disgust and disapproval of the slurping, smacking, and loud munching noises SilkHair has the habit of making whenever he takes a mouthful, but she won’t fall for it.

She says, “Tell me what you saw. I’m waiting.”

Gacal says nothing, eyes evasive.

In between two mouthfuls, each as noisy as ever, SilkHair volunteers with dash, saying, “Since he won’t tell, I will. He watched a sex film.”

Cambara stares at SilkHair with disapproval, as if she might charge him with stealing the thunder that is Gacal’s by right. As an actor, Cambara is a sucker for someone with a penchant for pace when developing or telling a story. Gacal has it to perfection; she has enjoyed listening to him, watching him perform. She always hated it when, in the process of narrating a tale, Wardi interposed himself into her telling of it, in effect killing it.

She asks Gacal, “Did you enjoy it?”

“I did.”

Silent, Cambara’s face tightens, as she asks herself what her reaction might have been if her son Dalmar had sneaked away after dark, seen a blue film, and told her without batting an eye that he had enjoyed it. No matter, she thinks. She knows what Wardi would have done. He would have beaten him to a pulp and then would have blamed what he often called her permissiveness, which, in his view, is no way to raise a Somali child in North America. Will Gacal’s penchant for blue films, developed perhaps since getting here, judging by his cool attitude, eventually affect their own relationship? Too difficult to predict; she will have to wait and see.

Then a part of her tingles with renewed excitement. She shifts in her seat, precipitously itching to discover if he might read and enjoy the text of her play. She will do so at the appropriate time, alone, in her room, without SilkHair’s presence. SilkHair strikes her as competitive, capable of the fury with which he tops his unjustified jealousy. Is she premature in thinking that her gamble to get to know Gacal and see if he has what it takes to be in her play has paid off?