Nuruddin Farah - Maps

In Jigjiga, the warrior, weary and fatigued from travel and worry, took ill. He stopped at the first house and knocked on the first door and spoke with the first man he met — luckily for him, the owner of the house, a very wealthy man. The warrior and the little girl were both given generous hospitality A day later, the warrior died. And the little girl, who had been taken for his daughter, fell into the caring hands of the wealthy man. He raised her with his own children, making her embrace the Islamic faith, making her undergo the infibulatory rites, just like the other girls of the community. But he raised her with an eye to taking her as his wife when she grew up. And this he did, when she was seventeen. So, the man the little girl thought of and addressed as “Father” for ten years of her life, overnight became a man to her, a man who insisted he make love to her and that she call him “husband. In the end, the conflicting loyalties alienated her, primarily from her self. And she murdered him during an excessive orgy of copulation.

To escape certain persecution, she joined a caravan going south to Kallafo, a caravan in search of grain to buy. She introduced herself as Misra Haji Abdullahi — taking anew the name of the man who became her father and whom she murdered as her “man”.

And you asked, “The girl’s father and mother? Does anybody know whatever became of them? And whether or not they are still alive? Or if one of her parents has remarried or has had another child?’”

You were surprised to learn that the girl was the offspring of a damoz union between an Oromo woman and an Amhara nobleman. She was the female child of the union, one in which her mother agreed, as is the custom, to live with an Amhara nobleman, none of whose other wives gave him a male child. The contract was for a period between a fortnight and six months. The girl was conceived by the “salaried” concubine. Because the issue was a girl, the man lost interest in her, abandoning mother and child to their separate destinies and uncertain fortune. “Yes, yes, but did the girl have a half-brother or a half-sister?”

“No one knew.” That was her answer.

“And then what happened?”

Again, she entered the household of yet another wealthy man. This time, she entered the household as a servant but was, in less than a year, “promoted” to the rank of a mistress and eventually as a wife. By the time she found Askar, the woman had been divorced. She had had two miscarriages and was discovered to be carrying, in secret, a dead child in her.

“A dead child in her, carrying a dead child in her living body?”.

“That’s right.”

“And then? Or rather, but why carry a dead child?”

“Then the living miracle in the form of Askar took the place of the dead child inside of her,” she said, holding you closer to herself, you, who were, at that very instant, dreaming of a horse dropping its rider. But you weren’t alert enough to note a discrepancy in this and Misra’s true story. For she had her own child who died at the age of eighteen months. Nor did you ever ask her why she told you this fictitious version. Or is your own memory untrustworthy?

VII

A week later, the following:

Late one afternoon, the Archangel of Death called at Karin’s place as though he had been invited to tea, just as you were invited to partake of the festive atmosphere, have a cake or two and biscuits too — and his share of the flowing conversation. When the opportunity presented itself, the Archangel whispered something discreetly in Karin’s old man’s ear, saying (you were told afterwards) that he, the Archangel, would return in precisely seven hours. So, would the old man finish, in elegance, all he had planned to do — wash, pray, say a few devotions, make a number of wishes, give his dardaaran to his Karin and, if it pleased him, tell her that time was up? In retrospect, you recall that the old man kept giving furtive glances to a timepiece by his mattress on the floor, rather like somebody who didn’t want to miss an important appointment. Together with Misra and Karin, you were making joyful noises and nothing seemed to be amiss. It was the placid look in the old man’s eyes that said to you that something was taking place, but you didn’t know what. First, Karin looked at you and then Misra and there fell the kind of silence which precedes an event of great significance. Somehow, Misra and you sensed your presence was standing in the way of Karin and her husband’s communicating a secret to each other. And so you left, leaving in your wake, you thought, a silence so profound you were sure a change of inestimable importance would occur in your lives.

Before midnight, the old man’s leaf fell gently from the tree on the moon. It was a most gentle death. Hush. And the soft falling of the withered leaf didn’t even tease the well of Karin’s emotions, nor did it puncture the lacrymatory pockets. She didn’t cry, didn’t announce the departure of the old man’s soul to anyone until the following morning. She stayed by him, keeping his death all to herself. She lay by him in reverent silence, he dead, she alive — but you couldn’t have told the difference, so quiet was she beside him.

She washed him as she washed him every day of all the years that he had lain on his back. Alone, but not lonely, her hands white with soapy foam, her eyes tearlessly dry, her throat not at all teased with the convulsive wishes of moumfiilness, she moved back and forth and her hands washed and touched and felt a body she had known for years, the body of a man who had “possessed” her, a man who had given her love and children — and who, at times, made her hate herself. She married him when very young. She wasn’t even fifteen. You might say she could’ve been his daughter. She was small and a woman, and he was muscular and shapely as a man, and was popularly nicknamed “Armadio”. He came one morning and made a downpayment for her. He went “somewhere” (he had a job to do, that was all he was willing to tell anyone) and returned, his going as mysterious as his returning. He wasn’t a man for formalities, weddings and parental blessings. He shouldered her in the manner porters lift any weight. He spoke little, said little, the night he deflowered her. “I have a job to do,” he said, and she carried his child.

He gave her children. He gave her lots of space and silence and love, when there. But he disappeared every now and then, saying, “I have a job to perform”. One day, he came home to a woman who suspected him of being with other women. He didn’t explain himself, didn’t scold her when jealousy threw her into tantrums, even when she maliciously described him as “the man with a job to do”.

A month later, he called her into the bedroom before he parted on one of his mysterious missions and he did something he had never done before. He told her he might be away for a long period. He suggested she sell the house in which they were living and that she buy a smaller one, if, yes if, he didn’t come home before the rains. He was most tender and he gave her money which he was sure she and the children would need. “But what job is taking you away from us?”

“Death might,” he said.

“Now what do I say to people when they ask me where you are? You are my husband, the father of my children, the man I've lived with and loved all these years. What am I to say?”

“Tell them I had a job to do.”

“I want to know more.”

He said, “Don’t worry. I'll not allow death to take me away,” half-smiling, as though Death was the name of a woman with whom he was madly in love. “I'll come back, sooner or later.”

He didn’t come home before the rains and not even after them. She received news of him over the wireless. Armadio was apparently a member of a cell of the Somali Youth League which was agitating for the reunification of all the Somali-speaking territories. He was the chairman of the cell under which fell the activities of the movement within the Ethiopia-administered Ogaden. He was caught when doing a job and ended up in one of Haile Selassie’s many prisons. When she didn’t hear from him, she sold the house and moved into a smaller one and, as told, did her job. It consisted of taking care of the children, sending them to school and making sure they all left for Mogadiscio, where it was safe to be a Somali and be proud of it, and where they would join cells from which to launch spearheads to open the way for a united Somalia. She stayed — and waited. She was sure he would come home. One day, he did. He was seen standing at her door. He looked tired, “like a man who had done a heavy load of a job”, she said. He didn’t speak of his ordeals and his years in prison. He was carrying a holdall which was empty save for a portrait of Ernest Bevin.