Nuruddin Farah - Knots

She thinks she has led too much of a sedentary existence since arriving, hardly exercising, her muscles atrophying. Thing is, though, her mind is alive — thank God for that; her family’s property is back in her hands to do with as she pleases. She worries about Bile’s descent into darker moods of dejection. She needs to devote equal time to the personal and the professional sides of her interests from this moment on. She dedicates several hours of the next day to decide how she will go about these.

Looking at the telephone, as though willing it to ring, she wonders when Raxma will call to give her the news she has so far gathered about Gacal’s parents. Eventually, she falls asleep in the small hours but not before reminding herself that she needs to know just as much about SilkHair.

Cambara wakes up, dazed, to the ringing telephone in her room. She stretches her hand out to answer it, and, as she does so, her eyes still closed, she thinks, who can be calling at this most ungodly of hours? Perhaps Bile to thank her for the stupendous bunch of grapes she presented him with and which they shared with pleasure. But when she grabs the phone and then opens her eyes, mouthing the words “Hello, who is this?” she realizes that she is making two errors: one, it is later in the morning than she thought — probably about eight-thirty, nine o’clock; and two, she did not see him in real life or give and share grapes but in a dream, which the phone call interrupted.

She hears a confirmation of this in the distant voice of a woman who says, “This is Raxma with the latest. Are you up, ready to receive it?”

“Just a moment, Raaxo.”

She gives herself a moment to look at her watch, which is by the bedside, sees that it is quarter to nine, and tells herself that it is time she has been up, eaten her breakfast, and asked after her two charges, to find out how their night has been. She sits up, rams a pillow behind her to lean against, and says, “I am listening, Raaxo.”

Raxma’s voice sounds closer, as if coming from next door. “I’ve rung around and am able to confirm much of what he has told you.”

“You’re a comfort to me,” Cambara says. (The two friends alter each other’s name — Raxma abbreviating Cambara to Cambo, meaning “apple,” and Cambara changing Raxma to Raaxo, meaning “comfort.”

“What time is it where you are? Don’t tell me that you’ve stayed up to call me, because it is close to one in the morning.”

“What won’t I do for a friend?”

“I appreciate it, I really do.”

“Anyhow,” Raxma starts to speak, then pauses. “Gacal’s parents, namely Qaali and Omar, lived in Duluth, Minnesota, until Omar found a two-year consultancy in Nairobi and the boy’s mother, Qaali, moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to complete the remaining one-year compulsory coursework for a postgraduate degree at that university. Just before Qaali’s departure for her fieldwork in anthropology in some faraway village in the Dogon country, the people whose traditional culture she was researching, she and Omar agreed on a date, in three months’ time, when she would visit them in Nairobi for a break. From what I hear, they communicated as frequently as they could. In the part of Mali where she was stationed, telephones were unreliable and e-mailing was impossible, because there were frequent power cuts, at times for a week and more.”

“Tell me what you know about her.”

“Qaali has been described to me as a very determined woman intent on making up for lost time, in that she was determined to take her Ph.D. before her fortieth birthday. This was her second marriage, Omar’s first. She had other children by another man; he had none, except their only boy. Add to this the fact that Omar was her junior by five years and the one with the job and the money. As a family, they often avoided the company of other Somalis, and they chose to relocate because of the adverse comments some Minnesota Somalis made about the gap in their ages and their respective incomes.”

“I feel for Qaali, I like her,” says Cambara.

“I knew you would.”

“So they had no friends among the Somalis?”

“They had only American friends, who call her ‘Precious,’ a direct translation of her Somali name, Qaali. Here you have a Somali woman reinventing herself as an American. I suspect, too, that she may have put ‘Precious,’ not Qaali, on her U.S. passport, so we must keep that in mind when searching for her whereabouts,” says Raxma. “Anyway, Qaali and Omar spoke Somali to Gacal, their son, and English to each other, and wanted to have nothing to do with this clan business, his side or hers, it didn’t matter.”

“I’m curious how you garnered this information?”

“Don’t interrupt my flow. Wait until later.”

“Go on.”

“What was the last thing I said?”

“Nothing to do with this clan business.”

“But they were nationalists, and they wanted to provide their son with a worldly perspective,” Raxma continues, “and while he was still young and malleable wanted him to speak the language, learn about Somali culture, and pick up enough Arabic to be a useful tool for later in life. They saw the well-paid job in Nairobi as a godsend, for it would afford Qaali a number of years to devote to her studies; and Omar and Gacal would be close enough to Somalia to make brief visits. It just so happened that a fortnight before Qaali was due to visit, Omar bought air tickets for the two to make the first of what they hoped would be many trips. Omar was making a cursory reconnaissance, taking a good look at the city, deciding on a good enough hotel for them to stay in when the whole family reunited to spend four weeks together, after Qaali joined them in East Africa.”

Cambara interrupts, “Come the week for Qaali’s visit…!”

“No answer at home when she phoned, because by then they were in Mogadiscio,” Raxma continues. “One thing you need to know is that she came to the nearest town to make the phone call, since none was available in the village where she was doing her fieldwork. So she stayed in the town for a couple more days, ringing Omar’s mobile, his direct line at the office, his home in the evenings, and after several unsuccessful attempts, the school at which Gacal had been enrolled. She struck lucky there, the headmaster promising to look into Gacal’s disappearance. He called him his star pupil, and said that the whole class missed him. Apparently Gacal was ‘a charming kid,’ He asked her to phone him in a couple of days. When Qaali did, he informed her that he had learned that her husband had gone to Somalia, intending to be back after the weekend and that no one had heard from or about him or Gacal.”

“What did Qaali do?”

“She flew to Nairobi, a city unknown to her,” Raxma replies. “She had little money and therefore found a cheap hotel for the night. The following morning she went to her husband’s workplace, and they couldn’t tell her more than what the headmaster had relayed to her, nor did they know anything more at the school when she called on the headmaster. She didn’t bother asking the Somalis, of whom there are hundreds of thousands in Nairobi, putting up at every expensive hotel and frequenting the city’s cafés, teahouses, and restaurants, certain that Omar would not have had dealings with them. Two days later, she took a twelve-seater, qaat -carrying plane to Mogadiscio in search of her husband and son, last seen when they were both well and planning to make a weekend visit to Mogadiscio.”

“And then?”

“Not a word from her. Vanished.”

Shocked, Cambara can’t think of anything to say. She takes a deep breath, shifts her position in the bed the better to know what to ask. After a brief pause, she asks, “How have you gathered this information? To whom have you spoken?”