Nuruddin Farah - Maps

“The Fulanis of West Africa are the only conquering people I know of who adopted as their own language and culture the one of the people whom they conquered. I’ve never learnt why.”

Plates were passed to and fro. And I grieved at the thought that millions of us were conquered, and would remain forever conquered; millions of us who would remain a traditional people and an oral people at that. And I saw, abandoned, burning cities the Goths had set ablaze (I didn’t know who the Goths were, but promised myself that I would find out). I saw, in my mind, the Mongol Emperor, and he was riding a horse and kicking his heels against the beast’s ribs and setting fire to all the letters of the alphabet and more. I also saw abandoned dead bodies — those of men and women and children dead from napalm spray — and cursed the Russians and the Cubans and the Adenese. (I think this must have been after the Russians, the Cubans, the Adenese and the Ethiopian soldiers defeated the unaided Somali army) And I saw history books open at the page beginning with the encyclopaedic definition of the concept “Civilization”.

The written metaphysics of a people is their “civilization”.

So read, read in the name of “civilization”,1 thought to myself. And write, write down your history in the name of the same “civilization”. “This is a pen.” “This is a nib.” “That is a book.” Power!

Once, long ago, I said to myself, Misra was my cosmos. She was good, she was kind, she was motherly and I loved her warmly, I cared about her tenderly. Now that cosmos has been made to disintegrate, and Misra has betrayed. What am I to do? I, who still love her!

V

“Wars disorient one,” said Uncle Hilaal the day we learnt that Misra would definitely call the following day “Wars make one do the unpardonable. And in any case, we don”t know if she was the one who betrayed. I mean, we don’t know for certain if she was the person who informed on the freedom fighters, we have no evidence.”

I hid my inner torment behind the silence I stood in — my hands behind my back, my body upright, my mind alert, my thoughts stirring within me echoes of conversations I had with Misra years ago, with Cusmaan who was my tutor some nine or so years ago, with Salaado — and with myself. Somehow, I felt I knew I had to betray one of them. I had to betray either Misra, who had been like a mother to me, or my mother country. However, part of me was worried — worried that a curse would be placed on my head by either. And I couldn’t help remembering dreams in which I saw an old man with a girl’s face and features, or another in which the dreamer, a young man who imagined he had envied a woman’s menstruation, menstruated.

Many years have gone past since I last saw Misra; many months since she was accused of betraying a freedom fighters’ camp in which six hundred men lost their lives — or were said to have done so; many since I was preached to and shown pornographic magazines by Cusmaan, my tutor, and I have, since then, for whatever it is worth, made my own friends — one of them a young woman, my age. And I know now what Misra and Aw-Adan were up to at night, in the dark I also appreciate what grand sacrifices Uncle Hilaal has made and what a great “receiver” Salaado has been. And here I stand at the crossroads. Shall I leave Salaado and Uncle Hilaal for a freedom fighters' camp in the Ogaden? Shall I register as a student at the university? And what must we do about Misra when she calls tomorrow?

Nothing was clear in my head. One moment, I was young and with Misra; the next moment, I was allowing a country to be borninside of my thoughts; then, I was being trusted with a new life by Uncle Hilaal, and Salaado was looking on as a witness to my being wed to “myself”; and finally, I was being told about Misra”s betraying secrets to the enemy I was at a loss. I was very sad. Oh, Karin, my dear Karin — is it true?

I was unwell that day

I

In the wake of the greater national loss: a personal one, equally as devastating. He felt terrible and this left a horrible taste in his mouth, something his tongue (i.e. his memory) couldn’t give an appropriate name to. He became weak from want of energy he walked about wooden as his soul Again, he wouldn’t eat, complaining that he was tasting blood in his saliva. His body united in itself two temperatures: one moment, he said he was feeling very hot, the following instant he was very cold as if he had “ice circulating in my arteries and veins, not warm, living blood’. His eyes were bloodshot from sleeplessness. To the point of obsessiveness, his imagination “heard” loud reports of guns being fired and he saw men, women and children falling, and dying under the fire power. Six hundred and three of them! He mourned for the souls of the betrayed dead. The loss was so great, the tremor in his soul so distressing, that Askar behaved like a man watching a part of him slip away. He had been well when he was given the sad news — well, and alive to the detailed horrors which Karin offered. He remembered he had been ill and in bed when the Ogaden, in a coup de grâce , was returned to Ethiopian hands by the Soviets. He remembered someone commenting then, that what the British imperialists had put together wouldn’t be pulled asunder by Somalis — the Soviets, themselves imperialists, wouldn’t permit that to happen. But what could one say now? Misra, dearest Misra, why did you have to do this?

He was alone with Karin and she told it to him alone. In his room, with its maps and mirrors, radio and other items he had acquired, or was given as presents. Karin was served tea. She had aged slightly, her skin smooth as old leather, her chin sporting a longish Ho Chi Minh “beard”. She gave him the latest news about Qorrax (“He is very chummy with the newly appointed governor, he is often with him. A traitor, no doubt about it. He always was”), about Aw-Adan (“An exceptional man. He is a legendary figure in the town’s history. Bare-handed, he took on three of them and killed them. Just like that. As easily as a strong-armed man might behead a hen. They say his faith in the destiny of his people — he wasn’t Somali, he was a Qotto, you knew that? — they say that was his strength, gave him confidence”), about Shahrawello (“She died, poor thing, leaving behind her a pool of blood, no more. She cut her throat. No one knows why. Some thought it was because she felt humiliated by Qorrax’s treachery, others because all her sons had been killed in the massacre”), about Misra, what news about Misra?

“Why ask,” she had said, “why bother about her?”

Indeed, why did he wait until the last minute to ask about her, he said to himself. He should’ve started with her. She was, after all, as close to his own beginnings as anyone is ever likely to be. “Why not?” he said. “What’s become of her?”

Karin studied him and thought Askar looked more innocent now than he had been when younger. For one thing, his “stare” had lost its sharpness; for another, the satanic mischievousness which used to light his eyes with lamps more powerful than any wick, this, too, wasn’t there. She said, “It means you haven’t heard.”

For a moment, there was a flash, lasting barely a second — an outburst of flames in his look which reminded her of his younger self. It was an ambiguous look, transitory. Karin didn’t know what to make of it. “Heard what? Is she dead?”

“No. That she is not.”

He knew there was bad news coming. He didn’t speak until after he had steeled himself against it. He hardened his body, he deadened his soul — he was ready to hear anything. Then, like somebody who derives courage from the certainty of death and who says, “What’re you waiting for? Kill me, shoot me, get on with it and quick too,” Askar said, “Go on. Tell me the worst. What’re you waiting for?”