Nuruddin Farah - Maps

Do you know to what they attributed your silent withdrawals? Or rather how they explained them to each other at night, as you lay asleep, or perhaps dreaming, in a room all your own, all by yourself? “Such horrors,” had said Hilaal, “such blood-shedding and such terror in the frightened eyes of hunger and famine — part of young Askar is terribly suffering the loss of the world he has known.” Salaado argued, “But his eyes say one thing, his silence another,” her head beside Hilaal’s, hers pillowless, his on a pillow high as a throne. “And please don’t psychoanalyse us,” she had added.

Silent and withdrawn, yes. But your mind was busy, your tongue active. And you put a distance between yourself and the world. Your mind was busy and your tongue active throughout this period, because you read everything out loud, every bit of writing that came your way, you devoured every printed word you encountered. You read everything out loud so you would hear and not forget what you had read. You were excited in the manner of an Arab who has made a new friend. You were under the hypnosis of a newly found friend — the material you happened to be reading. And Salaado chose tales from Khaliila wa Dimna and you read it together, your voice hesitant, hers confident as a trickster’s.

Alone in your bed at night, lonely in your room, the first few nights were disheartening. You wished you were allowed to share their room. You were frightened of the dogs that barked in a house not very far away, you wondered if they might jump over your fence and enter your room. Salaado was sufficiently sensitive to have given it a thought. One night, she smuggled a small radio into your room and you slept to its jabbering. The radio was to stay Did it take Misra’s place — Misra, whose voice regulated your sleeping rhythms? Maybe. Anyway you slept to its jabbering as though it were talking to you and when you awoke in the morning, the large radio was on in the living-room, giving the news bulletin.

They took turns reading to you at night. Uncle Hilaal’s favourite was Al-Macarri’s Letter of a Horse and a Mule; Salaado’s was Khaliila wa Dimna . You couldn’t help comparing them to Misra; you couldn’t help deciding that you adored all three. But you wouldn’t tell them how you missed Misra. In short, you drew a curtain of silence round yourself. The question was, if this was merely a phase you were going through. “What if this is all there is?” said Salaado.

“He’ll speak,” predicted Hilaal. “He’s just like my sister, his mother.”

Then, one day, you gave to Uncle Hilaal your mother’s journal. You never said why you had held it as your unshared secret, why you never mentioned you had it to anyone.

And the curtain dropped — there was sunshine and Salaado and Hilaal saw how much vigour you had in you, how active you were behind the artificial veil; and the noise coming from behind the clouds of your quietness was so deafening they were pleased, but at the same time a little apprehensive. You were, as Salaado put it, “overtures in the human form of friendliness. He is wonderful. ” Uncle Hilaal read your mother’s journal, turning the pages with anxiety. You waited to be told what the gist of your mother’s journal was. Instead — a question:

“What was Uncle Qorrax like?” he asked.

You remembered seeing his name occur in the journal a couple of times. Was he important to her? Was he vicious and nasty and wicked to her? You wished someone would tell you. But no one did. “What was he like?”

“Did Uncle Qorrax abuse my mother’s trust?” you asked.

Uncle Hilaal said, “What makes you say that?”

You remembered the goings-on between him and Misra on the one hand, and Aw-Adan and Misra on the other. But you also sensed that Hilaal’s interest in what Qorrax had been like was genuine. “Did he rape my mother?’” you asked. “Did he want to marry her when news about my father’s death came?”

“Go and rest awhile,” suggested Salaado.

“No,” you said and were aggressive.

There was a pause. Then: “Then tell us what he was like,” said HilaaL

And you abandoned yourself. You took a moment’s breath, you paused, every now and then, as though a gag had suddenly been removed. You were a belated outpouring, you were heavy like overdue rain. And you shook as you spoke. But you spoke and spoke and spoke. What was Uncle Qorrax like? He was terrible, ruthless, a brute and he beat his wives and his children from sunup to sundown. You remembered (it was amazing, you thought, you remembered this — and you congratulated yourself, like an actor who had performed well) that you were fond of him only for a very brief period of time — when you loved his shoes. You gave him what was his due. He knew how to choose his shoes. There was no denying that. They delighted your sense of vision, when, as a crawling infant, you came anywhere near them, during that brief shoe-loving phase that all children go through. You loved them so much you wanted to put them into your mouth. However, when you outgrew the shoe-loving phase, you began to hate him all the more. You distrusted him — that was it. You had no faith in him. Right from the very instant — you weren”t even two days old — when, washed and clean, you were shown to him, you cried. Yes, you said to Uncle Hilaal and Salaado, you cried most furiously. You thought for a while, you reasoned, that you were allergic to his odour. But now you knew why you had nothing but a plethora of contempt for him. Apparently, it was atavistic — something you received in your mother”s milk. She hated him.

“How do you know? You haven”t read her journal, have you?” Hilaal asked you.

Uncle Hilaal and Salaado watched you as you sifted your ideas and sorted them out. You appeared desperate, like a man upon whom it has just dawned that a future is not possible without his disowned past. Then the river of your emotions flowed again. And you said (Uncle Hilaal will never forget this. Not only that, but he holds the view that you became another person speaking it, and that, unbeknownst to yourself these were your mother’s precise words), “The man has made others suffer, his children, his dependents, his wives, yes, he has made every one of them suffer when he himself does not know what the word ‘suffer’ means. It is a tragedy.”

Being excitable, he let his emotions speak for him. Hilaal said, “Now I see the third” much in the same manner as you might have said, pointing at Misra, “Here is the earth!” The child in him surfaced and you saw an aspect of him you were to love forever — his kindness. He touched you once, twice, thrice, encouraging you on, like a fan on a cyclist’s road to victory slapping the saddle-seat of his idol, shouting joyously, “Go on. KO!”

You did. You began from the beginning, a second time and a third time. Misra was the heroine of your tale now and you played only a minor supporting role. Which was just as well. You needed to tell “Misra’s story”, obviously. A story has to be about someone else even if it is about the one telling it. You talked about your worries, about your inhibitions with regard to other people who mistrusted Misra. You spoke and your features thickened and you were enveloped in the darkness of moonless nights — and you were in her cuddle, you were her third leg or her third breast, and the two of you rolled upon each other in your sleep and each complained about the other who had kicked or taken the sheet away from the other. You were the stare in your eye. You focused it on her guilt. You were the stopper of fights, the beginner of quarrels, of gossip, and it was about you that conversations with Misra easily started. You were most dependent on her. “She’s bewitched him,” people said. They said she fed you all kinds of herbs, that she had taken possession of your soul. “Look at his eyes,” they said. “They are wide open even when he is asleep.” Nor did you fail to mention the last breakfast, the one you were filling your empty viscera with when you left Kallafo.