Nuruddin Farah - Knots

She thinks it best to act very cautiously from now on, considering the traces of tension between the two boys, traceable most definitely to the fact that they are aware of their contemporariness in her interest. That neither is of her own flesh and blood complicates matters, each being of the view, perhaps, that he can outdo the other in earning her trust, her affection. Moreover, she has to keep this fact in mind, knowing that it is one thing when dealing with one’s own offspring, to whom one might speak any way one pleases, confident that there is a fund of forgiveness there for the parent and offspring to share between them, and altogether something else when one is confronted by youngsters not one’s own, youths who have come with their own baggage and attendant history. She remembers umpteen occasions when she and Dalmar had fierce quarrels; still, they stayed together. It won’t be so with these two. Of this, she is certain.

Just before the waiter returns to retrieve the breakfast cutlery, Cambara calls up Kiin to ask for yet another favor, this time for someone to escort “one of my boys” who has no shoes and to help him buy a pair of flip-flops. A minute of so later, as it happens, the waiter arrives to inform her that Kiin has instructed him to take along the money and “one of her boys” to the main market for a pair of slip-ons.

“How much does a pair cost?”

The waiter mentions a sum in the thousands. Cambara does not bother to know how much this is in greenbacks, assuming that it can’t be more than two or three dollars. She borrows a pen from the waiter, and she addresses a note to the deputy manager of the hotel authorizing him to hand over the said amount plus a couple more thousands, just to be on the safe side, to the bearer.

The waiter tells SilkHair to wait for him near the exit; excited, SilkHair does so most willingly. Alone with Gacal, she is nervous. Why this is so, she can’t decide. Is it because she is holding out on him, not telling him that she is showing her sweet side while, behind his back, she is having Raxma delve into how he is where he is, what his story is, who his parents might be — questions that may take a while to resolve?

To make up with him, she takes him to her room.

Then she provides him with a soft drink from her small fridge, a variant of Coca-Cola bottled in Arabia and imported into Mogadiscio at some cost. This variety is apparently much sweeter and said to give the drinker more of a kick than its American prototype. She is sure that when he gets back from shopping for a pair of flip-flops, SilkHair will want one too, if he hears about it.

Not sweet-toothed, she sips at her mineral-water bottle, making it last longer. She sits on the floor on a rug, and seeing him look at her as a young man might eye a woman he is fancying, she keeps her physical remove, remembering his talk earlier about enjoying watching a blue film. There is no telling what he might do; she has to be careful, that’s all. To put distance between them, she points him to the settee. Neither speaks until both are seemingly cozy.

She asks, “Incidentally, did you read the thin book that you had beside you when you fell asleep? You know the one I mean?”

“It was called Fly, Eagle, Fly, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“I did,” he says. “I read it.”

“What did you make of it?”

He says, “Liked it. Read it twice and was reading it for the third time, in fact was halfway through it when I must have fallen asleep.”

The temptation to give Gacal her entire text based on her reading of Fly, Eagle, Fly, and let him get on with it, read it by himself, and then come back to her with his comments is appealing; yet Cambara feels a little uncomfortable, if equally doubtful that it would be wise to do so. She is not certain whether the boy has the gumption to make as gainful a reading alone and without help as he might with her there, beside him, offering guidance. Of course, even though she knows that he can’t have seen a play since coming to Mogadiscio, where the gun is glorified and culture enjoys no kudos at all, she assumes that he may have watched or acted in a play in Duluth. It is safe to assume that he is familiar with the basics, from having presumably seen films of one kind or another — American before getting here; Indian, Korean, or Egyptian since arriving in Mogadiscio — films in which some dialog occurs. She should simply give him the damn text and study his reaction. Be done with this dillydallying, woman!

“Here,” she says, giving him the parallel text, in English and Somali, printed in double space and elegantly bound.

“What’s this?” he asks, weighing it, as if to determine its value that way.

“Open and see.”

He does so and reads the title in Somali, first to himself with the vigilance of someone being examined who does not want to make a hasty error. He reads the title for the second time, enunciating each word separately and with formidable panache, maybe because he has realized the nature of the text with which he is dealing: Gallayrro iyo Dooro (Eagles Among the Chickens). Once he turns the page, he appears charmed, as if meeting a person whom he likes; she assumes that he is encountering the text on its own terms, he is so engaged. An instant later, he is so taken with the reading of it that he absentmindedly kicks the Coca-Cola bottle, spilling its contents. Apologizing, he gets up to help mop up the mess, but she says she will wipe it with an ancient rag she finds among her castaways. When she hunkers down on the rug on the floor, she watches as his concentration becomes him: seemingly older than his years, his focus centered wholly on what he is reading, and not a muscle of his moving, despite his strained breathing.

Cambara compares what she imagines to be the earthiness of Gacal’s strength of character to clay: compact when wet and yet malleable; soft and yet susceptible to becoming hard, if left to itself. There is of course the question of what he will make of the text when he has read it. If he likes it, what does he like about it? She has reason to feel optimistic about Gacal, who, since his father’s murder, has lived the life of a mouse in a cage. And what a life it has been, one in which violence has figured frequently and in which he has had to do with the meanness of other people, many of them unknown and unrelated to him. Has he the willpower to set himself free, with a lot of help from her, of course? She can only be impressed, suspecting what he is capable of and seeing him act grown, mature…and responsible.

Does she know what kind of relationship she envisages for the two of them? She must not rush in and must not take on more than she can cope with. She reasons that Arda, her mother, will accuse her of engaging in a “trade-off,” her mother’s provocative statement that her daughter “bought” the unsuitable Wardi: bartered his affections for Canadian papers as well as paid college retraining fees so that he could obtain employment in exchange for his love. Her past follies, these — she need try to be more cautious this time around.

Turning, she watches Gacal reading and turning the pages with rapt attentiveness. He reminds her of Dalmar, whom she hoped to raise to become a keen reader, to learn many languages and life’s skills, a child diametrically opposite Wardi, who often boasted that he had not opened another book since taking his re-sit to graduate from a community college. The idiot described reading a four-page brief for a case as tiresome, when he was incapable of changing a bulb, hammering in a nail, or fixing the flushing mechanism of a toilet — Wardi the nincompoop. Gacal is doing fine, she decides, for a child hamstrung by the unfortunate situation in which she has found himself.