Nuruddin Farah - Maps

She said, “Who is this man, Armadio?”

He answered, departing, for once, from his job-to-do formula, “He is the one British friend Somalis have.”

“How so?” she asked.

“He is the one powerful figure in British politics who has advocated the reunification of all the Somali-speaking territories.”

He stuck Bevin’s portrait on the dung-plastered wall with the help of a couple of thumbtacks someone gave to him. And he spoke no more of jobs to do or places to go to. He fell unwell. He complained of acute pains in the spine, but whether he had been tortured in the Ethiopian prison, he wouldn’t say; nor would he talk of what it was like to be in a dark room year after year, isolated from the rest of humankind, from his Karin and from his children.

One morning, he didn’t get up to say his subx- prayers. “My back” he said. And from that moment on, he lay on his back, on a mattress on the floor. His wife washed him once daily — no, washed is not the right word. What she did was to wet a cloth a little bigger than a face towel in soapy water and run it all over his body, rubbing harder where it was hairier. For ablutionary purposes, it was he who performed it, whispering the right traditions and verses as she dipped the cloth in cleaner water, massaging the proper places himself. He prayed, lying on his back. He didn’t go through the body-motions of sujuuds and rukuucs . To the suggestion that they consult a doctor, cost what it might, his response had been, “I have no more jobs to do.”

Bevin’s portrait was transferred from the dung-plastered wall to a spot in the ceiling directly above his bed. Karin spoon-fed him, holding him by his nape with her left hand and wiping away whatever mess his mouth made with her right. She treated him as she might have treated a child — if she were blessed with a sickly one at her age — with knowing kindness. And when someone asked Armadio why he was still holding on to life, he said, “Unless I know there is a job for me to do, is there any point my going there? In the meantime. I'll wait for a word from Him.”

The word came. His last words, “No mourning for one who has done little for his country, his wife and his children. Promise, Karin. No mourning.”

She noticed there was a stain of blood on his mouth. She was trying to discover the cause, when he breathed his last. She promised, she, the living, promised to the dead, “No mourning”. But she couldn’t find out the cause of the bloodstain on his mouth, and in the end gave it up.

And there was no mourning.

The old man lay, just as he had always lain in the room, on his back, on the floor. The only difference (and you noticed this) was that now he lay in state and would be buried. Also (since you and Misra were allowed to take a look at him before others came), you saw that there were bloodstains on his lips. You were assured that he had died a gentle death and that his soul parted with its user for so many decades — peacefully. As the mourners came from far and near, as the kettles sang a rosary of teas and blessings of the appropriate suras, you asked Misra, why the bloodstain on his mouth? She did not know.

The subject of death enabled you to return to your own beginnings, to the day when Misra found you with a mask of blood for a head — and a stare. You stole in on Armadio’s corpse. Is this what Mother looked like when dead? Perhaps not. Death here was clean, you thought. An angel had prepared him for the moment. You had this thought, not in Karin’s but in your compound, with your shadow falling across the one cast by the tree planted the same day as you were born.

“It wasn’t clean, was it?” you wondered, springing upon Misra a question she wasn’t in the least ready for. “It was blood and pain and struggle all the way to the end for the old man, wasn’t it?”

“On the contrary,” she said.

“And my mother’s death?”

“Come, come with me,” she said, and you obeyed.

And she walked the ground of her memory over again, with you beside her, repeating all she had told you before, word for word, telling you all she knew about your mother’s death.

“My father, what do you know about him?”

“He died for a struggle, he died for a national cause.”

“My father had a job to do, did he?”

“That’s correct.”

“And he died doing it?”

“That’s correct.”

And when night fell and most of the mourners had gone, the two of you were joined by Karin. “Here is a gift from the old man,” said she, giving you the portrait of Ernest Bevin.

You accepted it with a great reverence that befits the memory of the old man you loved, and the British political figure for whom the old man held high admiration. “Do you know who this man is?” said Misra, pointing a finger at the portrait.

You said, “Ernest Bevin was a dream of a man for well-informed Somalis.”

I

There was nothing like sharing the robe the woman carrying you was wrapped in, nothing as warm, with the bodies, yours and hers, touching, oozing and sweating together — I naked and she not — and the rubbing together of the bodies producing itchy irritations, scratchy rashes and crotchy eruptions of skin. Then the quiet of the night would crawl in like an insect up one’s back — ticklish and laughter-producing. The darkness of dusk would take over one’s imagined sense of being: this time, like an insect bite so scratchy that you cannot think of anything else. And so, for years, I contemplated the world from the safe throne carved out of Misra’s back, sleeping when I pleased, swinging from her back as a fruit the thorn which is its twin, making water when I had to and getting scolded for it; for years I viewed the world from a height slightly above that of a pigmy’s head.

I seem to have remained a mere extension of Misra’s body for years — you saw me when you set your eyes on her. I was part of the shadow she cast — in a sense, I was her extended self. I was, you might even say, the space surrounding the geography of her body. And she took me wherever she went. As a result of which, I became the invited guest to every meal she was offered, partaking of every generosity she was given. I was the overhearer and eavesdropper of every conversation she had — the first to know if she was in pain or no; the first to notice if she had her period. Which I could tell from the odour her body emitted, from the way she shuffled about, from the constant washing she undertook and from the fact that I would get spanked for the slightest noise and she would shout at me more often. Yes, I was the time Misra kept — she woke when I awoke, clocking the same number of sleeping hours as I had done, feeling unwell when I was taken ill. Now, if I were circumcised, I thought to myself, and I became a man, yes, if…! What would become of our bodies' relationship? Surely I wouldn’t remain an obvious extension of Misra’s physicality? Surely, I could no longer be her third breast or her third leg? Perhaps she would put me down on the dusty ground to fend for myself, play by myself, and the relationship which the years had forged between our bodies would cease to exist. If seen alone by a neighbour, she wouldn’t be asked to explain where I was. I wouldn’t be the clothes she wore to a wedding party; I wouldn’t be the bringer-about of conversations, of friendships, and because I wasn’t with her, wouldn’t be seen with her, no man would make advances to her using my presence as a safe ploy, saying something like, “Oh, what a good-looking boy”, pinching my cheeks, asking me my name, how old I was and so on and so forth, until he and Misra spoke to each other and exchanged addresses and agreed to meet again — but without me. In other words, I wouldn’t remain the subject of conversations, when she was really the object of someone else’s real interest.