Nuruddin Farah - Knots

“I am moving into our house, which has been recovered, thanks to you and many other well-wishers’ efforts. I feel that otherwise all your achievements will have been for nought, comparable, as a Somali pastoralist might say, to pouring milk on the thirsty sand of the Sahara.”

Kiin stares at Cambara like someone whose center of conversational gravity has shifted to new shaky ground. Kiin fumbles among the wide repertoire of her wisecracks in an attempt to show that nothing will faze her.

She asks, “Do you think it wise to do so now?”

Cambara is selective in what she tells Kiin. She omits any mention of the dream and her conversation with Raxma, where the idea to move originated. However, she stresses the professional side of her keenness—“It’ll be easier, I’ll have continuity”—and then puts due emphasis on her monumental desire to show her gratitude to Kiin—“I’m moving into the house as a token of my appreciation to you and to all the others who have contributed to its recovery, above all you, Farxia, Dajaal, and the others”—and adds, “We’ll have a party at the property just before we produce the play. How does that strike you?”

“But why?”

“I am itching to get down to the business of producing the play,” Cambara says. Then she goes on, “There is a lot of work waiting for me. I need to start blocking the play, rehearsing, auditioning.”

“There is time yet, surely?”

Impatient, Cambara cuts in and says, “It’s all been wonderful staying here and enjoying your lavish kindness. Thank you very much; you’ve been all sweet and a boon to me, better than manna from any heaven, considering.”

“Have you discussed this with anyone else?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“But why?”

She dares not underscore the bleak dreariness of her lack of privacy, her need to rely on others so she might perform the most ordinary of life’s chores, aspects of Mogadiscio life that strikes her as utterly disheartening. An ancient unease returns. Will her moving into her house free her from these daily exigencies? Won’t she become even more reliant on others for protection? Kiin is silent for a long while, and Cambara watches her, her head buzzing with thoughts. Since it is characteristic of Kiin to precipitate an obstacle as she busies herself to remove it, Cambara anticipates Kiin’s initiative and preempts it with a single move in a sentence.

She says, “Given the choice, I would like to relocate right away, and for this I will require a bit of initial help from you.”

Kiin is looking at her mobile, as though willing it to ring, or maybe she is considering whether to phone Raxma to suggest that she intervene. She replaces the phone in her handbag and says, “Name your needs.”

“Your truck with armed escort, so I can move some of the stuff straight away,” Cambara says. “I would appreciate it if you could organize the purchase of a generator, a couple of beds and mattresses, a few pots and pans and other kitchen utensils.”

“Consider it done,” Kiin says. “What else?”

“Nothing else for the moment.”

The edge of Kiin’s voice is sharper. She says, “These are, as you put it, your initial needs. I am surprised that for someone relocating to a battle zone, abandoning the comfort and safety of a hotel and prematurely endangering her life, you have no more items on your shopping list. Bodyguards, handguns, at least two battlewagons? Are you sure this is the extent of your requirements?”

“I am sure.”

“No walkie-talkies or anything else?”

“I will keep my rooms here of course.”

“Of course.”

“And whenever our kitchen is not running, or if I get tired of eating my food between rehearsals or scene takes, I’ll be sure to arrange takeaways from yours.”

“No problem.”

“There is a lot to do,” Cambara says, sitting forward in her chair, the front part of her body stretching as if at some point it will go off on its own, she is so eager to get up and go.

By way of urging her to follow her own instincts, Kiin, making the “Go, go sign,” with her hand, says, “What are you waiting for?”

“When will things be ready on your side?”

“The truck, the deputy manager of the hotel, the head of our security, and the armed escort will be ready to take you in half an hour,” Kiin says.

“Then see you down here in half an hour.”

With Kiin gone to organize things, Cambara, now alone, is unable to square up to her necessities, which are in part determined by a matrix of theatrical and personal musts. Where to start? What to pack? What to do about the boys?

On her way to her rooms, the fires of enthusiasm, at the center of her being, suddenly start to dwindle. She is in a quandary, aware that she has been too hasty, but she is unwilling to change her mind. First off, she stops at the reception and brings wads and wads of cash in large U.S. dollar denominations out of the hotel safe, to buy a 2,000-kilo-watt generator for her electricity requirements, a fridge of modest size, a queen-sized bed and two single beds, mattresses, bedspreads, sheets, bath and face towels, soap, and some food, including some vegetables, and if there is no supermarket with already packaged chicken, then a live one. She replaces the cash she is not taking with her and locks the safe.

Then she turns her attention to the matter of the clothes that she will bring with her, settling easily on a number of middle-of-the-road choices, neither too ostentatious nor too plain, plus the kind of work clothes she is now wearing, informal and chic. She takes good care to choose her nightdresses, just in case. “I hope I am not making the chickens hatch the eggs of the eagles,” she says to herself. “In which case, too bad and too sad.” Then she throws in two of the masks, one presumably for Gacal, the other for SilkHair.

In the unrelenting clutch of an oncoming excitement, more like an onset of flu announcing its impending arrival via a sneeze, Cambara hurries to gather a few things together and dashes out of the room to join Kiin. As she double-locks her rooms, she realizes that there are difficulties to do with living in several places — an apartment in faraway Toronto; the two rooms in the hotel; and now the family house — at the same time. She is already finding out that she will have to return to the hotel tomorrow for some of the masks, which she is leaving behind, advisedly because she has no idea how the head of security, Hudhudle, who appears to be a devout Muslim, might react to their presence in the truck. The suitcase she is carrying knocks weightily down the steps as she descends, the two wooden masks sounding hollowly; she lifts the suitcase higher to make certain she does not damage them. She is pitching forward when one of the bellhops offers to relieve her of it, informing her that Kiin is waiting for her near the truck, waiting to be loaded and ready to depart.

Kiin opens the door of the vehicle, the engine on and idling, to welcome Cambara in, just as the bellhop hands the suitcase to one of the armed escorts in the third row. The two friends are about to take leave of each other, Kiin preparing to wish her the best of luck, when Cambara’s mobile phone squeals; she answers it on the second ring.

“Where are you?” asks a man’s voice.

At first, Cambara does not say where she is, because she tries to figure out why she hears a touch of Gaelic in Seamus’s English today, something she has seldom heard before. Has something made him nervous, worried, frightened?

“Why do you ask?” she says.

Seamus replies, “Dajaal, who left a message on my mobile, says that your family house was attacked last night and there have been casualties.”

Kiin is curious, but Cambara tells her nothing.