Nuruddin Farah - Maps

Pain, per se , I discovered, was no problem. I could cope with it, I could dwell in its territory. But there was the problem of space. For pain not only defined my state of mind but my movements as well. I couldn’t come into bodily contact with anybody, not even Misra. I became the bed’s sole occupant. People kept their distance. I was like a man with an arm in plaster. And people were careful not to come unnecessarily near me, surrendering up the space surrounding them to me — how generous of them, I thought, how kind! Misra slept on a mat on the floor. Because I was sore, I was given the bed to myself. Traditionally, it is taboo for women to stay near newly circumcised boys, and so Misra was sent away. But I created such an uproar Uncle Qorrax allowed me to have my own way, yet again. I didn’t care much for traditional taboos, especially when they severed me from somebody who wasn’t herself Somali and whose psyche they wouldn’t affect. When she was allowed to return to me, I didn’t think “How kind of Uncle to allow her to come and stay by me in this hour of need”. No, I thought of how clever I had been in making her return possible. I had my own sheet to cover myself with, one that I had had to hold at a certain distance from the wound — again, a question of space, a question of the geographic dictates of pain. And once Misra was offered a bed of her own which was brought into our room, I began to claim our bed as mine — and I was delighted. One other item had had to go too — the slate which I had kept between my legs. I discovered I needed space for myself, that I couldn’t tolerate anyone or anything standing in the space between myself and where I had intended to move. In short, the dimensions of my body occupied the centre of my world of pain, my preoccupations, and I took in the body’s measurements, as it were, and followed the guidelines suggested by its dolorous perimeters. I moved or lay on the bed accordingly.

When asked how I was, I lied. I said I was well and that the pain had more or less confined itself to the de facto boundaries of the wound. The truth I didn’t tell anyone was that I had, in effect, become two persons — one belonging to a vague past of which Misra was part, of which painlessness was a part, a vague past in which I shared wrappers with Misra, shared a bed with her. Yes, a vague past in which I felt so attached to Misra I couldn’t imagine life without her. The other person, or if you prefer, the other half, was represented by the pain which inhabited the groin. I held the citizenship of the land of pain, I was issued with its passport and I couldn’t envisage when it would expire or what would replace it or where the urge of travel away from it would eventually take me to, nor at what shores this would abandon me. In the territory of pain, there is a certain uncertainty, I thought, of a future outside of it.

On the fourth day, Uncle called on me. Misra placed herself between him and the bed which I lay on. And she explained what I had done, she talked about me in a way I thought recalled to me a history of her concern and worries; one in which she was the guide. She told Uncle how many times I got up to make water, how many spoonfuls of soup I had eaten, what I did and what I didn’t do. She spoke about my condition as if I were a monument with a background worthy of delving into. Uncle, because he wanted to see the wound for himself, told Misra to leave us alone. It was only then that the thought that she hadn’t seen it crossed my mind and I remembered her saying that society believed it to be bad for a woman to see a boy’s wound of circumcision lest it fester and never heal. Anyway, she left us alone. Uncle, gentle and playful, took a peek at it and was visibly satisfied all was well. He called Misra to return, which she did. He asked her what gifts I might like.

She looked at me considerately, silently. Uncle looked from her to me and then back at her. Was she saying that I was now a man and I could decide for myself? Maybe. Uncle asked: “Is there anything you’d like brought to you as you lie in bed?”

I had already worked it all out in my head. I said, “A pen.”

“A pen?” he asked in disbelief.

I said, “A pen and a sheet of paper.”

Again, he looked at Misra, whose head nodded approvingly, and then at me. He was obviously pleased with the choice I made, especially when I added, “I would like to practise copying and recopying the verses of the Koran which I’ve already committed to memory. Otherwise, I might forget them.”

He was thoughtful for a second or so. Then, “Anything else?”

I was silent for a long time. To Misra, “Can you think of anything?”

I watched them exchange smiles. I knew they used to meet occasionally in the dark. I wondered if I was in their way; I wondered, did they need the bed on which I lay?

And again back to me: “Askar?”

If I could I would’ve said that I wanted Misra taken away from me, sent away somewhere else, away from me anyway for a week, a month or two. If she were away, I said to myself, perhaps the act of weaning would occur less painfully and I would be able to bear the loss well. I would, in time, be able to replace the loss with a gain, I thought, looking up at Uncle who was still awaiting a request from me.

“I can’t think of anything else,” I said.

But Misra spoke and we both turned to her. (In the meantime, I realized that, while thinking thoughts and listening with attention to Uncle and Misra, I had taken temporary residence in a land-of-no-pain.) She said, “I can think of something he’s always wanted.”

“Yes?”

“A globe,”’ she said. “Or an atlas. He loves the blue of the sea. And a picture-book of horses and birds. Please get him a globe and a map of the seas and the oceans,” she appealed.

I was as surprised as my uncle. I didn’t know I loved the blue of the sea — not then anyway — nor the world of the oceans, or picture-book horses and birds. But I was grateful to Misra — grateful that she chose to introduce me to a world in which I have felt happiest since then.

V

During my brief sojourn in the land of pain, two things occurred: one, I lost myself in it (I wondered, was this why Misra suggested I was given a map of the globe and of the oceans?); two, I took hold of a different “self”, one that had no room and no space for Misra and no longer cared for her. I let go of Misra and, with self-abandon, roamed about in the newly discovered land, thinking not of her, but of pain. It rained a lot and the rain levelled the terrain which wiped out the readable maps, the recognizable landmarks and milestones. And there I met the children of sooterkin and I shook hands with them. I was introduced to my future, my destiny — indeed, somebody pointed it out to me, and there was no Misra. Or was I in the land of dreams?

The waters of the rain washed the slate on which I had written my prayers and the thunder drowned my chanting of the verses which praised the traditions of Islam. The world, crowded like Noah”s ark, lay under my feet. Lying on my back, contemplating the ceiling, I roamed in a state of stupor; I roamed in the darkness of a rainy night, my body soaked in pain; I roamed — spreading myself as though I were water; I roamed inside of my body, which was ablaze with the flames of an untold future. Then I heard a voice, I heard, loud and clear, a voice, peculiarly like my own. I heard, not the blabber of a child whose tongue stumbled on Misra's name, but that of a man, saying what, in essence, could be translated as “I am I!” And I was calmed by what Uncle Hilaal was later to call my “existential certainty”.

And I was asleep and alone.