Nuruddin Farah - Maps

He was very sad. For her.

I

The joy of travel, you said to yourself, there is nothing like it. The joy of open spaces, that’s divinity itself. And for a few minutes, your mind dwelled on guilt and on loss, yes, your mind spoke to itself of the fact that Misra wasn’t going with you to Mogadiscio. You were in distress and insisted she go with you. You didn’t hear her say it yourself but Uncle Qorrax had told you that Misra had indicated her desire to remain behind. But why? you asked, and you were hysterical, why? “Misra says, and I am quoting her own words,” said Uncle, “that she prefers being here until the white bones of the unburied corpses assume a browner tinge, resembling the earth’s. This is what Misra says, but she promises to come to where the lorry is leaving from.” And you travelled as arranged. Together with a number of men, women and children, you left Kallafo in a lorry travelling to Mogadiscio, one of the first to do so. And Uncle Qorrax asked a man to look after you, a man whom he knew and who happened to be going to Mogadiscio. Not only did he request that the man help you if the need arose, but he entrusted to him a letter in a sealed envelope, addressed to Uncle Hilaal, your maternal uncle. Strange how certain names never come up and when they do, they mean a lot to you. It is true that you had never “heard” of HilaaPs name nor of Salaado, his wife. But then there you are. Life is full of surprises.

Uncle Qorrax explained to the man to whom he entrusted you, “His maternal uncle’s name is Hilaal Cabdullahi and his wife’s name is Salaado. The address is on the envelope you’re carrying with you. If you encounter problems finding him, please go to the National University and someone will know where he lives, for he teaches there. We’ve never met, he and I, and have never corresponded.” Then Uncle Qorrax did something which made you cast your memory back to the morning when he handed you over formally to Aw-Adan as the latter’s pupil. Now he gave your hand to the man who took you by the wrist. saying, “Come”, as though you were a goat he had paid for. You would have preferred it if he had formally shaken your hand.

And so, for the first time in your life, you travelled away from where you were conceived and born and where your parents and your umbilical cord and your first teeth were buried. For the first time in your life, you would cross a border that has never been well spoken of among Somalis, for such borders deny the Somali people who live on either side of it, yes, such borders deny these people their very existence as a nation. Uncle Hilaal would say of this that “Somalis went to war in order that the ethnic origin of the people of the Ogaden would match their national identity That’s what gives the Somalis their psychical energy, a type no other African people have, only Somalis. Imagine, Askar. A nation with a split personality, Askar. How tragic! Of course, the economic and political considerations are to be given their due weight and they are important. But it is the psyche of the Somali — his peace of mind and that of the community — these matter a great deal more.” But will you hold a second, please? You don’t have to rush the story and its audience, do you? Why not introduce Uncle Hilaal and Salaado when their appropriate time comes? Now go back to the lorry before it left Kallafo. And where is Misra?

You could now see Misra lost in a limbo of despair. She was a woman sunk to the bottom of distress, and she wasn’t saying, or capable of saying, anything save your name again and again. You had already begun thinking about Uncle Hilaal and of the future linking you with him, a future as long as the distance on the map between Kallafo and Mogadiscio. You averted your look from Misra because it pained you to see her so unhappy and, in any case, you knew Uncle Qorrax wouldn’t approve of your request that she come with you. So you looked at other people and they were hugging lovingly and exchanging farewell kisses. The young were taking their parents’ or guardians’ hands and were kissing them and some were shaking hands as adults do, while others embraced as friends and equals do, you thought. You heard the promises they made to one another. You could feel a touch of fear in their voices, for the war in the Ogaden was still raging and nobody could know where victory would fall, on whose side victory would fight. They promised to one another that they would write, give one another news frequently. And there were prayers and beggars were given their xaqqas-salaama^ a farewell fee given by every traveller to a man or a woman who would pray for his or her safe journey You watched your uncle pay, on your behalf, your xaqqas-salaama to a man looking not at all like a beggar. Well, you thought, he doesn’t wish me luck. And then you looked in Misra’s direction and were pleased to see Karin was there too. And Karin came to you.

“How do you feel,’ she asked, “leaving us all?”’

You had already been helped up and into the lorry and so, because of this and because there was a great deal of commotion and a lot of overflowing emotion, the place was hellishly noisy. You shouted to Karin: “Pve already begun to feel the loss, and it takes a most weird form,’

She stood aside, letting an anxious man pass who was bidding another farewell. Then she said: “How do you mean?”

“It is as if I have no inside,” you said to Karin. “I can feel my rib-cage with my fingers, or knock my knuckles against it, and it drums emptily, as if there is nothing inside, nothing whatsoever; it feels as though I have no heart which beats, no lungs which breathe and no head which can think lucidly.”

She was a dear! She said: “Nonsense.”

You noticed that Misra was keeping a deliberate distance from you, as though she didn’t want to make any bodily contact with you. Perhaps she thought that once you had touched, it would be difficult to part again. But now that you were returning to Xamar from where your father took his nickname, was she, too, likely to return to hers? Since everybody comes from somewhere, you decided she, too, would go back to where she had hailed from. Who knows, she might ride the horse which had dropped its rider; or meet her father who was of a noble Amhara family; or her mother or one of her half-brothers or half-sisters or cousins. Wars have a way of springing surprises on one, some of which are pleasant and some deadly unpleasant.

Oh, and the mystery of things! Karin now stepped aside and Misra was giving you something. Taking it, you felt something move and the tin-foil in which Misra had wrapped it glittered in your eyes. But what was it? It was food which was still warm. How did she know you felt empty? You began eating voraciously and you guzzled and guzzled. Uncle Qorrax, who was talking to some friends, was joined by Shahrawello and some of your cousins. They inquired as to who had given you the food that had “bewitched” you? “Why, look at him. You would think there was famine in Mogadiscio,’ It was then that Shahrawello mentioned that a rumour had been spread that Misra had hung above your head, one early dawn, a slaughtered fowl, dripping with blood. You thought, let them say what they like. I hope that when I’ve filled my empty viscera with food prepared by Misra, I’ll be able to express my emotions better.

You were busy eating and could hear the engine of the lorry revving, you could see the exhaust-pipe’s white smoke — and before you knew what was happening, you realized that the lorry was in motion. When you looked back, you saw hands wave and heard shouts of farewell but couldn’t determine which hand was Misra’s, Karin’s or anyone else’s; nor could you distinguish one person’s cry from anybody else’s. You rose to your full height. By then, distance was making Misra smaller, distance was making her shorter than half her size. However, when she finally vanished, together with her the township of Kallafo, Uncle Qorrax, his wife Shahrawello and your cousins — yes, when Kallafo was but a dot in the dusty distance, smaller than the speck of dust it is represented as on the map, it was then that you sensed that your heart had begun beating again and that you had lungs with which to breathe, and you were whole again. And the man to whom you had been entrusted was saying: “It is like sea starting where the earth ends. Because Mogadiscio, or any other town in the Republic, is a road leading to other roads, a road with a purpose that takes one to other possibilities,’