Nuruddin Farah - Knots

She says, “Very kind of you.”

Dajaal continues, “Seamus, who at times knows Bile’s mind better than I, not only because they have known each other for much longer and have shared their good and bad days, has intimated to me that Bile is of the view that we take a positive outlook on life, especially when it matters. And I agree with him.”

She says nothing, judging what Dajaal has just said to be no more than smug waffling, if taken on its face value. She settles on waiting until he has committed himself to an unequivocal position.

He goes on, “Seamus and I talked after I had taken you to Bile’s and later, when I was bringing him back. Again, we spoke after I waited long enough for you in the car park and you did not show up.”

“I can’t have been gone long,” she says.

“Long enough for me to worry and phone Seamus.”

She doesn’t want to challenge him, but she doesn’t think that the time between when she left the apartment and when she heard him calling her name was that long.

“Did you talk to Bile then, because he was there and having a meal with Seamus? Is that what you are saying?”

“From what Seamus relayed, Bile suggested a compromise. That you work on the basis of what he called ‘a limited release’ and that I moderate my earlier position and reconsider providing security for the specific site at which the play’s ‘limited release’ is being staged,” Dajaal explains.

“What do they mean by ‘limited release’?”

Dajaal replies, “That it’ll be for a couple of nights at a specific site and for a select audience. Small and intimate enough so we can take the temperature and work out what our future options are after the first night. From then on, we’ll decide. If we think it is risky to give another performance, then we won’t. This is a compromise with which I am okay. In fact, this was what Bile suggested all along, only I was putting up resistance. Now I’ve come round to accept it, because of your exceptional gesture of kindness.”

Her eyes steady, she revisits in her memory the all-women evening do at Kiin’s hotel. That too had a select audience of a few hundred like-minded women who, comfortable in one another’s company, did outrageous stuff that might make a bald mufti wish he could borrow a wig and join in, carouse, cuddle, and delight in savoring the goods on display. She thinks that the plan might have a good chance of working. Dajaal’s men at the gates, checking; no uninvited guests. Only for one night, or maybe two, and only for a select audience, for a start.

“Brilliant,” Cambara agrees.

Dajaal’s features assume a happier aspect: his cheeks rounded from grinning, eyes beaming. His relaxed demeanor has a curious effect on her: She is excited by their physical closeness, the warmth of his body so near and yet so far, inasmuch as she cannot imagine touching or hugging him without undue complications.

“You can trust Bile,” Dajaal says.

“Bile has been wonderful to me,” she breaks in.

“He’s the gem of the lot, precious.”

What lot? He has no equal, she is thinking. Then, surprise of all surprises: She has all too pleasantly and absentmindedly removed her wedding ring without needing to apply water, soap, or oil. That she has eased it off her ring finger as uncomplicatedly as she has is a bonus. From this instant on, she may no longer consider herself wedded to Wardi.

Dajaal, uncannily, goes on and, as if he knows what Cambara is thinking, launches into some sort of a sales pitch in praise of Bile. “You go anywhere, you won’t find another man like Bile: generous, trustworthy, amenable to other people’s ideas, and ready to make them his own for the good of everyone else. The poor man hasn’t received back as much kindness as he has given. Alas, there is more sweetness to life than Bile has known.”

Dajaal’s high commendation of Bile’s character is perhaps in keeping with the Somali tradition in which, before a suitor asks for the hand of his intended, an aunt or an elderly female relative does the rounds, visiting the blood relations of the young woman before any serious bid is made for the hand of the bride-to-be. This last, crucial move, the most important of the courtship act, falls to the men. Only, Cambara thinks, she is not yet anyone’s bride. Moreover, she and Bile have not had the chance to talk about any of these matters; he has been indisposed. No matter. She can imagine nothing more challenging and more demanding than being in Bile’s company. Needless to say, it is very sweet of Dajaal, who is a regular kind of person, to involve himself in Bile’s well-being and to make as direct a bid for her hand as he has. It requires a man with a strong constitution to do so, and Dajaal has that and more, she assumes. In addition, he has an admirable loyalty and an enviable self-worth to embark on this most demanding of rituals.

He says, “Bile is the tops, no doubt about it.”

She smiles sheepishly and looks away, telling herself that someone has probably used all the words that Dajaal has employed, in praise of Bile, to describe him. That is the trouble; in a sales pitch, one is selling oneself just as much as the item being promoted.

When he continues his patter of praise, Cambara says, “Enough. You’re sounding as if you are speaking at his entombment. Bile is still with us and will live yet for a long time.”

That shuts him up instantly.

In the silence, they both become conscious of the fragility of who joins them. Unfortunately Bile is not around to say to the two of them, as a parent might to two quarrelsome preteens, “Enough. Cut it out.” It is then that it dawns on her that she and Dajaal are alike in their mad courage, the inimitable kind that can make a dent in Mogadiscio, a city that has fallen prey either to the machinations of the warlords or to the mysterious ways of mullahs’ courts claiming their fair share of divine support. The only difference is that she sees nothing wrong in relying on Dajaal’s bravery to do the dirty work as long as she does not bear witness or have firsthand knowledge of the perpetration of the violence. And it is obvious that he is doing whatever he is doing for Bile. She, like Bile, does not go anywhere near the scene of a crime where someone’s blood is shed. Yet Bile cannot not know what is going on. Sadly, that is how societies function, thanks to a few dozen who get their hands soiled to their elbows with blood.

They avoid looking in each other’s direction, Dajaal concentrating on his driving and Cambara absentmindedly trying to put on her wedding ring. They are silent like a married couple having their tiff. All of a sudden, she is alert to the change of scenery, and she pays attention to her surroundings, becoming aware of a young man, whom she soon identifies as Qasiir, Dajaal’s nephew, approaching. This is the first of several checkpoints manned by the youths Qasiir has assembled, Qasiir, who now, raising his hand in recognition of his uncle, removes the roll of razor wire from in front of the vehicle. Three more stops and many exchanges of camaraderie later, they are at the gate, which opens to let Dajaal drive in.

Then Cambara hears someone rehearsing a text with which she is very familiar, because she has written it, in full voice.

As she pushes open the door to get out of the vehicle, she says, “Please accept my apologies. I didn’t mean it to sound the way it came out.”

“I would do anything for Bile,” he says.

Just as she gets out of the door of the vehicle that Dajaal is holding open and before she has taken her first step toward the hall from which the rehearsing voice is emanating, her adrenaline rises to her head, almost depriving her heart of what it needs to continue its rhythmic beating. It moves her to listen with her full attention to the words she has written spoken with such eloquence. It is just as she gets closer that she senses an inconsistency in the delivery insinuating itself, for Gacal has become self-conscious, and he seizes. A pity, for his voice has left her impressed, sounding just the way she has always imagined it.