Nuruddin Farah - Maps

“For example,” said Uncle Hilaal in a voice which suggested two things — that the subject had been slightly changed, and that he was intending to make an original statement. “In Wolof,” he said, “did you know there is hardly any indicator of gender. A man who otherwise speaks faultless French might, when speaking about his wife who is right in front of you, and whom you can see display all her gender’s paraphernalia, refer to her as ‘he’. Likewise, the wife might refer to her husband as ‘she’.”

Unbelieving, I asked, “Is that true, Uncle?”

“Ask any Wolof speaker,” he said.

Salaado said, “How shocking!”

Her voice said that we had exhausted the subject and perhaps it was time we moved on to other areas of common interest. Somehow, we couldn’t help returning to the question of my identity papers. When would I get them? What psychological effect might they have on me? Would I consider settling in the Republic permanently? What were my chances of returning to the Ogaden or joining the Liberation Movement? In short, what did all this mean? And then I surprised even myself, asking: “Is there any room for Misra in my identity papers?”

Hilaal said, his voice anaemic, so to speak, “How do you mean?”

“You remember you've shown me yours,” I said — and then I saw how unhappy he looked and I thought I knew why, but I continued speaking nonetheless, this time with my look averted—“and I see that in identity papers there is space allotted to biological parents and to guardians but none to somebody like Misra, who is neither a biological parent nor a guardian at present.”

All he said was, “Of course,” but I bet he didn’t know what he was talking about.

I was about to add that Misra meant a lot more to me than anyone else when Salaado excused herself and left the living-room altogether. We looked away from each other, Uncle Hilaal and I, and each waited for the other to say something. I sensed each knew what thought buzzed in the other’s head, thoughts which were imprisoned in our heads like bees caught inside a bottle out of which they know not how to emerge. I had never seen him looking so sad, nor have I ever seen him appear so dejected, save on the other occasion, when there was an eclipse of the sun, but we’ll come to that later. Suffice it to say, I resolved right there and then that I would never raise the subject again; that I wouldn’t make references to my parents, to Misra and to Uncle Hilaal and Salaado in the same breath. Naturally, I remembered how evasive he had been when I asked him once to give me the salient points in my mother’s journal. In those days, ugly thoughts often crossed my mind: that Uncle Qorrax had raped my mother and I was his son. From then on, my mother’s journal didn’t exist, except in so far as one entry proved that she died after I was bom, an entry contradicting the view held by Misra — or am I confusing things? After a long, long silence, I said, “The truth of the matter is, Misra, being Oromo as you’ve explained to me once, belongs to a peripheral people. Nor would anyone believe that the Oromo form over sixty per cent of Ethiopia’s population, despite their occupying only a marginal position. And as such, the Oromo have either to assume Somali or Amhara identity Thank God, my ethnic origin matches the papers with which I shall be issued,” I concluded.

I forget what he said, or whether he said anything. I remember him looking sort of relieved that we had come to the end of that round. So please keep this in mind if, during the course of this narrative, I make no overt or indirect references to my mother’s journal or related topics.

III

A couple of days after this discussion, Uncle Hilaal entered the living-room where Salaado was helping me practise my writing. He walked in exalted, like a man who has discovered a most coveted treasure all by himself. Somehow, I didn’t think it had anything to do with me, or that I might even get an unexpected gift. I sat where I was and let Salaado talk to him, let her find out what had so pleased him.

Salaado asked, “What is it?”

He said, in a matter-of-fact way, “Here it is.”

And he pulled out of his pocket a paper whose green, I thought, had faded a little, a paper with some writing on it, a paper folded up and, from what I could gather, cheaply printed, produced inexpensively and rather hurriedly, with my own photograph pasted on its top right-hand side and its spine bent unevenly.

He said, “I said, take it,” and it was only then that I saw, as though for the first time, that he was looking at me. The thought that it was I and not somebody else that he was addressing and to whom he would give something did cross my mind, but I didn’t speak it. I got to my feet in awe and extended out both my hands to receive it.

“It is your carta d'identitá” he declared.

From the way he gave it to me, you would've thought he was entrusting to me a brand-new “life”. Here you are, he seemed to say, with another life all your own, one that you must take good care of, since it is of paper, produced by the hand of man, according to the laws of man. I held it tenderly but also firmly, the way you hold a sickly infant. While I was looking at it, Uncle Hilaal engaged Salaado in a solemn conversation, as if she were to be a witness at my being wed to myself.

“Open it,” he said. “Come on. It won’t break.”

I did as told.

“Read it,” he said.

I chose to read it to myself. I held it open before me as one would a book, and felt its uneven spine as one would a person with a hurt disc in the vertebral column. The paper gave my particulars — name, father’s name and grandfather’s, as well as mother’s. There was a hyphen, I noticed, conveniently placed between my father’s actual name and the nickname he had acquired by going to the Ogaden from a Xamar base. I was to commit to memory the number of the identity card and was not to lose it. Otherwise, the school wouldn’t accept me. After all, I was not a refugee! Didn’t Salaado say that I would need the card to be with them? Anyway, looking at the photograph and, under it, like a caption, my name, I began to see myself in images carved out of the letters which my name comprised. It meant that I had a foglio famiglia and that I wasn’t just a refugee from the Ogaden. It is unfair, I thought to myself, that Misra wasn’t even given a mention on my identity card. Now I discarded my earlier belief that this was because she was Oromo and I, Somali. Perhaps, I concluded, it was because our relationship dates back to before my coming to Mogadiscio and before — goes back to before I myself acquired the Somali identity in written form. I reminded myself that Misra belonged to my “non-literate” past — by which I mean that she belonged to a past in which I spoke, but did not write or read in, Somali.

Then hurriedly, my thoughts moved to less controversial topics. And I remembered the day the photograph was taken; I remembered how much fuss was made about my clothes; I remembered being forced to change the shirt and trousers that had been my favourites, then — thinking it wasn’t /who wore them but that they wore me. (Very often, I associate certain items of clothes with one person or the other. For instance, Salaado’s necklace has an “S” dangling down from it, so not only do I associate the letter with her but it is, for me, the same letter with which the notion of “Somalia” comes.) And I wondered if it made any sense believing that passport-size photographs would help anyone identify a person? Are we merely faces? I mean are faces the keys to our identity? What of a man, like Aw-Adan, with a wooden leg — would you know it from the photograph? What of a baby just bom, a baby abandoned in a waste-bin, a baby, violent with betrayal — would you be able to tell who it was by wiping away the tear-stains and the mucus, would you know its begetter, would you trace it to its mother or father?