Nuruddin Farah - Maps

“I said, what about Abyssinia?” asked Salaado with a certain anxiety.

He said, “Abyssinia, too, is a generic name, coming, as it does, from the Arabic word ‘Xabasha’—meaning Negro. Again, the country assumes a generic name — not specific. Before it became an empire, when it was but a small kingdom, it was called Abyssinia; later, when it expanded and became an empire, Ethiopia. Both names have generic qualities about them.”

“Now what are we to learn from these concepts? And what do they mean in terms of the war in the Horn?” she asked.

He thought for a long time. Then: “What is at war are the generic and the specific as concepts — the Soviet Union, the USA, the African countries who are members of the OAU support the generic as opposed to the specific. Obviously, they themselves belong to the generic kind.”

“But the specific is winning the war?” she put in.

He predicted, “Only temporarily.”

“How do you mean?”

Again he thought for a long time.

“The generification of Africa is a concept which the Ethiopian and other African governments whose peoples belong to different ethnic groupings and sources use, whenever it is challenged by secessionists and ethnic minorities living in their expansionist and inclusive boundaries. Only in logical propriety do Somalis win their case — the Somali, as a people, divided into two British Somalilands (one of them independent and now forming part of the Republic, the other at present known as Kenyan Somaliland); French Somaliland; Italian Somaliland (forming part of the present-day Republic — democratic or not!) and former French Somaliland (now the Republic of Djebouti). The Somali-speaking peoples have a case in wanting to form a state of their own nation … but…!” and, shrugging his shoulders, he fell silent.

“But what?” she wanted to know.

He smiled. “That’s it precisely.”

Tense, she said, “But what?”

“It is the ‘but’ which introduces an element of the uniqueness of the Somali case, as well as the generally accepted fear that if Somalis were allowed to get what they are after, then the Biafrans will want to try it again, the Masai will want their own republic, and the people of southern Sudan their own ‘generic’ state. What escapes detractors of the great national dream is that Somalis have fought and will fight for the realization of their nationalist goals, but that the Masai haven’t and aren’t likely to; and that Somalis aren’t the only ethnic minority in Ethiopia who are displeased with their low status in the Amharic-speak-ing people’s Empire; or that the Somalis in Kenya, in the only British-held referendum, voted phenomenally highly, as a people deciding to be part, not of Kenya, but of the Republic. It is the ‘but’ which stands in the way of the Somali.”

Naturally, you cannot imagine yourself pulling at the nose of someone whose life was an embodiment of ideas; whose voice was immensely larger than any mansion you had ever seen; and who lived in the contradictory roles of “Mother” to you and Salaado. Didn’t you both rest your heads drowsily on his chest? Misra, in her limited way, taught you to separate the body from the soul; Salaado, the person from the personable; and Uncle Hilaal helped you home in on the other .

Now, do you remember when you asked, “But what do you do. Uncle, locked up in your study, day in day out?” Do you remember what answer you got — and if you were at all satisfied with it?

V

Your uncle’s study faced east and, in the mornings, when you looked out of the window, the sun’s brightness blinded you, and when you looked inside, you saw nothing but books, some heavy, some light to carry, some with pictures and some without. At any given time, there were a number of them open and he consulted them with concentration. You learnt, much later, that he had been researching into the psychological disturbances the war had caused in the lives of children and women. He never appeared keen on asking you questions. He knew you would speak, sooner or later; that you would tell him the dreams which had left impressions on your growing self; that you would, eventually, if given the chance to express yourself, enable him to put together his findings into the appropriate research categories he had been working on. Very patiently, he listened to you talk about Misra, hardly interrupting you, at times taking notes and at times not.

One day, together in his study, when he was explaining to you something about the deliberate distortion of the sizes of the continents (a distortion which made an essential difference to the size of Europe and Africa), you surprised him, and yourself too, by shouting, “Look, look!”

Uncle Hilaal saw a woman, visibly pregnant, chewing at something.

“She’s eating earth,” you said. “Just like I used to.”

He failed to make you see the difference between the “earth” you used to eat mouthfuls of, and the cakes of clay which pregnant women nibble on. You turned on him and, with a suddenness which made him half laugh, you said, “The reason why the continent of Africa is smaller is because the adult, as well as the small among us, eat its earth — which obviously makes it shrink in size. Could that be it?”

Again, with the patience worthy of a scholar addressing a potentially very intelligent pupil, Uncle Hilaal explained the reasons to you, giving you the political implications as well as the imperialist intentions of the cartographers. He was still on the subject when the tumult of excitement took you over and you were bubbling with enthralment. Apparently, there was another revelation you wished to make. And he let you.

“Uncle, do you know what I did once?” you asked, pulling at his chin.

He said, “Tell me.”

“I menstruated.”

He was crestfallen.

“I menstruated one night when I was asleep. Just like women do. Just like Misra used to. I could put the difference between my menstruation and a woman’s to the fact that I felt no pain whatsoever before or after; and that it happened to me only once.”

In total disbelief, “Only once?”

“Although, now and again, I have a strange feeling that there is another in me, one older than I — a woman. I have the conscious feeling of being spoken through, if you know what I mean. I feel as if I have allowed a woman older than I to live inside of me, and I speak not my words, my ideas, but hers. And during the time Fm spoken through, as it were, I am she — not I. And it pains to part with someone youVe allowed to dwell inside of you, because they have no life of their own, because they died young or some unforeseen disaster has cut their life short. In a way, there is a faint sense of unease in that I feel as if my mother’s death was my birth, or, if you prefer, her death gave birth to me.

Your uncle got up from his chair and silently stood behind the window. Something claimed his attention and he moved away from you, disregarding all your attempts at reaching him. Until you started saying, “Fve never seen the woman of whom I speak thus, except once, and even then, I saw the back of her neck and no more. Although that has a striking similarity to the half-profiled photograph of the woman you say was my mother.”

He moved nervously about the room. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Eight.”

He now had the look of one who had let go a whole universe’s worth and more. He gathered his notes and let the pile lie under his hand as he thought what his next move was going to be. He opened a drawer and brought out a matchbox.

“Do you want to come with me to the garden?” he said to you.

“What are we going to do there?” you said.