Nuruddin Farah - Maps

She didn’t open her mouth to say anything. But I was dressed now and it took me quite a while before I was sufficiently aware of anything or anyone outside of me. And she was rummaging among her clothes for something for herself, something decent for her to get out in, “Where are we going?” I said.

“You’ll know in a moment,” she promised.

“But why won’t you tell me?” I demanded.

She was dressed to kill, I thought. I wondered if it was Aw-Adan she had spent the night with, or was she with Uncle Qorrax? But did this matter to me? I heard Misra say, “Let’s go.”

Before long, I knew where we were going: to Uncle Qorrax’s compound. As always, the compound was feverish with activity. Today, it appeared more so than ever. There were at least a dozen camels, many heads of cattle, twenty or so goats and naturally the nomads that owned these. As was expected, there were some of Uncle Qorrax’s children and their chatter, which I thought of as their other selves. Misra and I walked into the compound looking a little frightened by all the noise. She gave me her hand the very moment I offered mine for her to take. Having made contact, we sat in what served as Uncle Qorrax’s anteroom — waiting. Half-shouting, perhaps because I was nervous, I said, “Do you know if Uncle is in?”

As though to answer my question, I saw the body of a woman push through a curtain to Uncle’s door. And there she was — a woman I hadn’t known he married. I thought of him as a magician, making one of his wives disappear between dusk and dawn, only for another to replace the vanished concubine. I cannot tell how many he married and divorced in the short period I began to take note of these cruel happenings. In fact, many of his children, for purposes of identification, carried not only his name but that of the maternal -bah line to which they belonged. “He’s coming,” the woman said to us and walked past us, out of the ante-room in which we had been.

Tall, handsomely dressed, his shoes elegant and shiningly polished and towering above Misra and myself— Uncle Qorrax. I was frightened of him, afraid I might earn his rage, worried that he might knock my ears deaf and my head insane. Especially now that he was staring angrily at me, I thought. Poor me, what have I done? I must say I was relieved to learn he was mortally offended with Misra. He said, “Where on earth were you returning from early this morning, Misra?”

Unperturbed, she mumbled something, as wives do when their husbands put indiscreet questions to them in public. Perhaps she suggested they postpone their argument until later. Anyway, he didn’t pursue the matter. Addressing me, because he wanted to change the subject to something less personal, he asked me how I was. The lump of fear in my throat allowed little beyond a grumble. It was just as well, I thought, for I might have spoken long-windedly and mentioned that Misra had been with Aw-Adan until daybreak. He said, “Let’s go.”

In awe, I looked from one to the other. Misra unclasped my hand from hers and, so to speak, pushed me towards Uncle Qorrax. I didn’t know where I was being taken to and was worried I was to go alone with Uncle. He said, “You and I will go together.”

I said Misra’s name and hung it on a peg for both of them to see.

“No. Alone. You and I,” he said, and took my hand.

Like a bewildered African nation posing questions to its inefficient leadership, I kept asking, “Where are we going? Where are you taking me to?” My thoughts crossed my mind. The most pressing one was addressed to myself: will I be able to cope with this separation from Misra?

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of my memory here. Possibly I’ve invented one or two things, perhaps I have intentionally deviated from the true course of events. Although I tend to think that I am remembering in precise detail how things happened and what was said. I admit the abrupt removal from Misra’s reassuring presence was similar to being weaned — despite the fact that I don’t know what “weaning” means (I was bottle-fed or “cup-fed”. However, there was something formal, something ritualistic about the encounter which took place between Uncle Qorrax and Aw-Adan, an encounter which occurred on the periphery of the latter’s kingdom.

I was tense. I stood away from them, timid-looking, avoiding any eye-contact with Uncle Qorrax’s children, one of whom was putting out his tongue (at me) in a gesture of derision. The pupils fell silent directly they saw us. The two assistant teachers held their canes in their tight grips but grinned noddingly at Uncle Qorrax. Aw-Adan came forward. He and Uncle exchanged greetings. They both then looked at me and then at themselves. Then I was no longer afraid, because I knew that I knew something about both of them — things that neither knew about the other. This fresh sense of elation gripped me unawares and my imagination flew away with me, which is why I cannot remember if Uncle Qorrax said the following to Aw-Adan as he formally handed me over as the latter’s newest pupil at the Koranic School of which he, Aw-Adan, was head:

“I bring to you, this blessed morning, this here my brother’s only son, whose name is Askar. The young man is ready to be introduced, by no less than yourself, to the Word of God as dictated by Him to Archangel Jibriil, and finally as heard by Prophet Mohammed in the trueness of the version; the Archangel was authorized by His Almighty Young Askar is nearly five years and, although he is younger than most of your other pupils, I bring him to you nevertheless. For there is no man in the compound in which he lives and one must take boys away from the bad influence of women. Will you accept him as a pupil of yours — in this and in any other life? he said, giving him my wrist in the way a seller at an abattoir offers to a buyer the front leg of a goat that’s been paid for.

Aw-Adan said, “I accept.”

“Like all human beings given life by the Almighty,’ continued Uncle Qorrax, “Askar is part bone and part flesh. The flesh is yours and you may punish it to the extent of it letting or losing a bit of blood. Teach- him the Word, punish him if he is disobedient, show him the light which you Ve seen when he is still young. The bones are, however, ours, by which I mean the family’s — and you may not harm them unnecessarily, or hurt them or break them. The flesh on the head and the hair thereon is yours, but the fluid in the brain may become yours only in so far as you've put in it the right amount of illumined knowledge. But you may not split his head with an axe.”

Aw-Adan nodded in silence.

“Do you accept Askar as your pupil as you accepted before him my own sons of my own body and blood?’” he said to Aw-Adan.

“I do.”

“The same conditions, the same monthly pay?” he asked.

Aw-Adan said, “I do.”

My uncle then formalized the deal by shaking Aw-Adan’s hand. This done, it seemed to me, at first, that he was ready to depart. No. Instead, he went over to and looked at the slates his children had scribbled on. Satisfied and appearing impressed, Uncle Qorrax left without so much as saying anything to me.

Scarcely had I taken my bearings than I was caned by Aw-Adan. You might want to know what I did to deserve such a sound beating. “That satanic stare of yours,” he said, when I asked why he was caning me, “dim it.” Could I? Even if I wanted to?

And you say that I am vindictive?

The letter alif , because I was hit by Aw-Adan and I bit my tongue, became balif; and ba when struck again sounded like fa; whereas the letter ta , now that my mouth was a pool of blood, was turned by my tongue into sha . (I can’t explain why, but for a brief period that nobody except me remembers, I had difficulty pronouncing the letter ta , which is the third letter of the Arabic and Somali alphabets. I guessed this was rather odd, given the fact that I could accurately pronounce the letter tha , as in the English word “thorough”, and also fa . Mind you, it wasn’t because my upper, front teeth were missing or anything, no. It was as if the sound t was altogether absent from the repertoire of sounds I could make. Years later, Karin came to Mogadiscio, Karin who had fallen out with Misra. And Karin gave me a startling bit of gossipy news: that Misra’s given non-Somali name had a t in it, a t with which it ended but which she got rid of so that her name wouldn’t raise eyebrows or provoke monstrous suspicions in the heads of the Somalis amongst whom she lived. But she restored the t when she fell in love with the Ethiopian security officer. Now how about that, I had thought. A t ending Misra’s name would make it Misrat, no?) Anyway, when beaten by Aw-Adan, I could only produce an ABC of confusion. Now I had enough evidence that he hated me. I was convinced he hit me whenever he had the opportunity to, caning me ruthlessly, hitting me as one vindictive adult hits another. He was far from being a responsible teacher disciplining an errant pupil. I could see hate in his eyes, I could hear contempt in his shallow breathing as he lifted his arm as high as he could in order to strike me. I could sense that he invested ail his power and muscle into the hit. I don’t know how long it was before I made the resolution that I had reached the point of human evolution where I could seriously plan to murder. Then something became obvious to me — or rather something was revealed to me — that I could kill, at least in thought. That was how I willed Uncle Qorrax and Aw-Adan out of my way and, for whatever this is worth, declared them dead. And it was the first, but definitely not the last, time that I tasted hate in my saliva — which is to say that I tasted blood in my mouth, which is another manner of saying that I tasted someone else’s death inside of me.