Nuruddin Farah - Knots

“Why has he stopped?” she says.

“No idea,” Dajaal replies, standing close by.

Then a fly, noisy as a tropical summer in full swing, buzzes in front of her, hovering close to her eyes, and she shoos it away, after which she listens as Gacal picks it all up again, less hesitant, his words aimed at her but addressed to an imagined audience.

“Once upon a time, there was a villager who went out alone in search of his son and the half dozen cows that he took to the fields in the morning for them to graze…”

There is a pleasing gentleness to the voice, as if the speaker is aware that great expectations are borne in upon him and he is doing his utmost to fulfill them. Cambara is hopeful that given time and a bit of help and several hours of voice training, she will be able to iron out the unevenness that she can now detect, listening. Nothing is insuperable; she feels certain that she will be able to take care of this in less than a day or two, given the opportunity and Gacal’s willingness.

She is silent and almost in a trance, pondering. His comment, “The boy is good,” makes her stir out of her stupor.

It takes her a moment to regain her composure and longer still to find her voice. She says, “He has the timbre of a trained actor, Gacal has. Glad I’ve stumbled across him by chance.”

“Where?”

“Turned up at the hotel where I am staying.”

“What’s his story?”

“Extraordinary.”

And before he has the opportunity to elaborate on her meaning, she moves purposefully toward the hall, with Dajaal on her heels, as though making sure he will remain close to her, protect her from harm. They come to the gate, and she suddenly stops, her hand going up, knuckles ready but not tapping. It is as if she can’t bring herself to believe her luck, and there is no wood to touch, the gate being of solid metal. Then she smells cooking coming from the courtyard: potatoes boiling, onions in a pan sizzling, a tape recorder playing a Somali song. Again, she hears the grown baritone of a boy who can easily train as a tenor, speaking.

“Please,” Dajaal says, and when she turns he insinuates himself into the gap that has opened, bows deferentially to her, and, pushing the gate, says apologetically, “Please step aside.”

He treats her like royalty. How long will this last? she wonders to herself. It can’t, it won’t, not for as long as she is with Bile. Maybe, all this gallantry is in lieu of the bouquet of flowers that a man courting a woman brings along and the dinners at restaurants to which he takes her. Besides, Bile is not all there, is he? Living in the abnormal times of a civil war means that this will have to do.

Entering, they find the armed guards sitting around the fire where SilkHair is tending to two pots, cooking. SilkHair says, more for the youths’ benefit than for Cambara’s or Dajaal’s, “You’ll have supper in a few minutes. Until then you may go and listen to Gacal. We’re having plenty of fun.”

Cambara pats him on the head and says, “Well done,” and proceeds toward the hall, where she is pleasantly surprised to find a stage: two planks that Seamus nailed together pronto, good enough for her immediate purpose. She says to no one in particular, “Seamus is a miracle worker.”

Then they watch Gacal going through his routines, whatever these are meant to be, rehearsing and taking different lines in turn, now speaking as a grown man, now as the young cowherd who has been missing and whom the villager looks for just before nightfall. A latticework of shades — the ones in the outer rings light, those in the inner circles darker — overwhelms Dajaal and Cambara, who can only stare, confused, because they cannot make sense of it, at least not at first. But it does not take Cambara long to locate the source of the shades and work out that someone is playing with mirrors of different tones and of various color emphases.

“That’s Qasiir, using a mirror to emit messages in codes,” Gacal says. “That means all is well and there is nothing to worry about.” Then he approaches, to welcome Cambara back with a hug, but hasn’t the ingenuity to carry it through. He lapses into the voice of his proper age, a boy in his early teens. “It is fun, rehearsing, SilkHair cooking, Qasiir fooling with mirrors,” says Gacal.

She is impressed with both boys for having taken the initiative themselves, a healthy indication that, if guided in the right way, they will be okay. “You’re all doing very well. How marvelous.”

Then he reverts to his own character, as she has so far sussed out. He retrieves a tape recorder from one of Cambara’s tote bags, and he plays it for her. Cambara listens to a voice montage, her own mixed with Gacal’s, and, superimposed on both of them, SilkHair’s. She realizes that he has ruined her tape, which is a copy of another. Luckily, she did not bring the original. She does not reprimand him.

“How have you managed to mix the voices?” she asks, going closer to them, sounding sweet, charmingly maternal.

“By playing several tapes and recording our own song, Gacal and I,” SilkHair says. “I am enjoying cooking too. We must feed them.” He points at the young militiamen in shiftless expectation of eating a meal, regardless of who cooks it, since they won’t.

Dajaal has had enough of this, and he is in no mood to indulge anyone. Just as Gacal joins them, Dajaal goes closer to where Cambara is standing. Mindful to be courteous to the two boys, whom she is pampering with her attentions, he speaks to her in an undertone, “In my job as a bodyguard and security fiend, I must have enough sleep. It’s been a long day, and I need to get back. Please let’s go. I’ll take you and your two boys to Maanta, then show my face to Bile before I call it a day. Do you mind?” He goes back to the car and waits.

The boys have resumed rehearsing. She waits for a couple of minutes for the two boys to get to a point in their routines where she thinks they do not mind being interrupted, then she claps her hands together, now looking at Gacal, now at SilkHair, and applauds.

Then she turns to SilkHair. “Is the meal you were cooking for the armed youths ready? Because if it is, then we must head back, return to our hotel, where there will be food for the three of us.”

When, after a few minutes, he says, “Cooked,” she instructs him and Gacal gather their things and hers too, so they will all return to the hotel. They do as they are told as soon as the armed youth descend like hungry wolves on the pots, one or two of them almost burning themselves and quarreling greedily.

Then she remembers a joke she and her son used to share, because she is pleased with the way things have gone today and she is all game. She says, “Last to the car is the pig with the shortest snout.”

And she breaks into a trot, half running. Gacal and SilkHair appear unimpressed, maybe because they find her humor about becoming the pig with the shortest snout a bit offensive. So they deliberately take their time, as if trying to wind her up, gather their stuff slowly, and then put on adult faces, silent, before they join her and Dajaal in the vehicle.

By then, Cambara is conscious of what they are up to, and decides to show them that she is no pushover. She says, “Boys, it’s been a long day. We’ll thank Dajaal in advance for his patience and generosity, and we’ll turn in early, the three of us, immediately after we’ve eaten our suppers.”

And that is what Cambara does: She turns in early, soon after her room-service meal. Too exhausted, she cannot bring herself to sleep. Restive, she switches on the lights to read, but her eyes close as if of their own accord, and her mind races off like a pampered child going out for a stroll with its mother, now running ahead of her, now behind her, and picking up memories and giving each of them a fresh once-over. Cambara examines in detail what her life has been like for the past few days, if only to determine what else she must do to make sure that she stays on course.