Nuruddin Farah - Knots

He is as brief in his response as he is self-contained in his reticence. “My pleasure.”

Silent, he gives his full attention to his driving, and he looks straight ahead, conscious, nonetheless, of her stare. If she is daring him to meet her gaze, then maybe the slight grin that forms and then disappears momentarily is his way of responding to it.

“You’ve set things in motion, with admirable results, managing something not short of a miracle: organizing the repossession of my family property without shedding a drop of blood. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” Then silence.

She falls despondently quiet, the faint echo of her voice replaying in her head. She feels as if she is in a free fall, the string attaching her to the parachute becoming so entangled that there is no chance of it opening. The intensity of her vulnerability, the unpredictable nature of her volatility surprises her as much as it shocks her.

The first to break the silence, Dajaal says, “I fear that Seamus may have misinformed you or worried you rather unnecessarily.”

“Please explain what you mean,” she says.

He obliges. “Maybe Seamus has misunderstood me.”

Cambara says nothing; waits.

“I have no objections to the use you are making of masks in your play,” he continues. “All I’ve said to him is that Islamic Courts folks might object to the use of carved images in theater and that if that were to happen we would run into trouble. Insurmountable trouble.”

“Have you ever seen any puppet theater yourself?”

“I have.”

“Not in this country?”

“No. In the former Soviet Union,” he says, adding, “when I was a student there, training as a military officer. A theater troupe from Ukraine came to perform for us. We also had the Guinean Ballet troupe perform, as they did here in Mogadiscio too, several years later. Both here and in Odessa — I am speaking of the ballet now — the audiences were shocked when the women performing in it bared their breasts in the final act. In Odessa, they gawked and asked for an encore. Here, in Mogadiscio, the audiences applauded. But then the courts were not much of a threat. Siyad Barre was in power then and he wouldn’t have countenanced their objections. Things are different now. The Islamists have terrific clout and an armed militia, and cinema owners and TV producers do their bidding when they forbid the showing of a program or the airing of a broadcast.”

Cambara recalls that for generations, women in Africa have employed the baring of breasts not so much as art, as the Guinean Ballet is known to have done, but as a political forum, used in opposition to the male order of society, which is corrupt, inefficient, retrograde. But that is not where she wants their talk to go; so she brings it back into line, saying “Do you know anyone who might raise objections to my use of the wooden masks? Personally?”

“I haven’t discussed the topic with anyone other than Seamus,” he says, “but I know the way things are here. All you need is one hardline Islamist quoting a verse from the Koran on so-called religious grounds, and you will find holier-than-thou crowds with placards gathering in front of the theater, picketing, and stoning the building or anyone entering it. Some self-described Muslim leader is bound to pass a fatwa on the head of the author, and a Mogadiscio businessman, eager to gain popularity and fame, will promise a sum of money in hundreds of U.S. dollars to anyone who will carry out the death sentence. In the meantime, the BBC Somali Service will interview the Muslim leader, the businessman in question, and the author of the puppet theater on their Friday program.”

Recalling her conversation with Seamus, she asks what he would do if, for whatever reason, someone were to object to the props as being graven. “In other words, on which side of the fence will you be if and when my life is under threat or if the hall in which I produce the play is firebombed?”

He acts as though he is impervious to her stare, which she has now trained on him. It’s obvious not only that he is not oblivious to it but also that he is bothered, a little shaken.

“I’ll have to give that some serious thought.”

“Fair enough.”

Neither speaks for a long time.

“You wouldn’t say the images are un-Islamic?”

“Some people would,” he says.

“ You wouldn’t, would you?”

When he doesn’t wish to commit himself to a position, a sudden sense of apprehension quietly seeps like an oil slick into unreachable and therefore uncleanable areas of her awareness, she feels disaffected. Why has she never considered that it may come to this? Which would she rather walk away from: her art or the family property, which is as good as recovered, as good as restored, and therefore all her own? She notices that Dajaal is slowing down, driving at funeral speed and looking now in the rearview mirror, now ahead, as if trying to spot someone.

Her voice meek, she says, “What a stark choice to make!”

Dajaal says, “I am aware of it, yes.”

Then both of them catch sight of an elderly man emerging from a huge, dilapidated building, moving in haste toward the vehicle, with his hands flailing excitedly. When the man gets closer, a smile of recognition spreads its wings on the old man’s wrinkled face. Dajaal eases off, changing gears and braking, but he does not switch the engine off.

He says to the old man, “Please take this woman to Bile,” and to Cambara he says, “Ring me on my mobile when you want to be picked up, and I will do so. Pronto.”

He reverses without waving, and off he goes.

A little antsy, Cambara steps out of the vehicle affording herself the time to wave and then address her words of thanks in Dajaal’s direction, although she is aware he won’t hear them. Maybe she is doing it for the sake of form, given the presence of the old man, of whom she is now in pursuit.

Catching up with him, they walk in parallel past a metal gate and a desolate space, down a stairway into a cool, damp, and dark basement. She wonders where they are, maybe in a sort of cave with flaky walls and an otherworldly echo. Afraid, she stays close to him, as they pass puddles of water, provenance unclear. They walk toward human voices — women chattering noisily, children in playful pursuit of one another — but she cannot tell from where they are emanating, from up above or from another basement below. The old man is hell-bent on getting her to Bile’s and she on not being left behind in this place, which is as damp as the bottom of a grave recently dug close to a swamp and emitting a god-awful smell, like Zaak’s mouth soon after he has awoken.

The old man, perforce, takes it easy when they come to a slippery staircase, holding on to the side railing, which is rusty and wettish. She too is cautious, moderating her pace to match his, her shoed feet meeting a perilous clamminess. The old man says, “Careful,” when she trips, and sighs heavily when she stands on the tips of her toes, flapping about, until she grabs hold of the side railing in time before falling. It is a mystery to her how the old man can figure out where to go or what is happening to her without looking over his shoulders; it is as though he has eyes on his back.

She feels relieved when they emerge into an open space, a former parking lot with no cars now. They climb up a short stairway, past a courtyard with a row of potted flowers and walls covered with creepers, dark, green, and young: the leaves of passion fruit in full splendor.

They stop in front of a metal door, the old man hesitating to press the bell. As for Cambara, she is reading a verse on a plaque nailed to the lintel: “Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God.” Scarcely has she had the time to decide from which holy scripture it was taken than the old man pushes the door open and leaves as fast as someone running away from a crime scene does.