Nuruddin Farah - Maps

Hilaal served Salaado and handed her plate over to her. He was serving Askar his portions when, exploiting the silent moment, he said, “I've offered to register her as my dependent. In fact, I’ll register her in our foglio famiglia as a relation. That means she will stay with us, be one of us, a member of our family.”

Salaado continued as the salad bowls were being passed around, “She believes she is very sick and predicts she will die soon. Now that doesn’t worry us. We think that, given the loving care she needs, she will recover. We’ll take her to one of my cousins who’s one of the best surgeons of this country and he will take care of her complaint. All her complaints. Today, before she went to sleep, she appeared distressed on account of a pain in her left breast.”

Askar’s stare became so severe, it disturbed both Hilaal and Salaado and when they followed it, they could understand it. Apparently, Misra, quiet as an insect, had crept in on them. They fell silent for a second. Then Hilaal and Salaado’s voices clashed clumsily, each giving up their seat, forgetting there was an untaken chair next to Askar. As she walked further in, looking a little rested, Hilaal and Salaado each offered her a portion of their meat. Askar pushed his towards the empty chair and said, “You can have my share, since I don’t want any of it, anyway”

And before anyone spoke to him, he was gone.

VI

The doctor said he could determine what ailed her only after she had undergone a thorough medical examination. But to Salaado and Hilaal he said he suspected the tumour in Misra’s left breast was malignant and that the breast would have to be removed.

No one told her this. Which was why there was, in the air, a sense of uneasiness as soon as they returned to the house. Salaado’s confiding the newly revealed secret to Askar (she spoke to him in Italian so Misra couldn’t follow) complicated matters further. He sounded as though he were indifferent to the sad news. And this greatly upset both Salaado and Hilaal. To ease the tension, Salaado asked Misra, “Is there anything you've always had a passion to see in, say, Mogadiscio? Something you've always had a wish to see before you … er… die as we all must when our day comes? Is there anything, Misra?”

Salaado registered Hilaal’s hard stare, which wouldn’t dissolve despite her quiet appeal. And Askar wasn’t impervious to what was occurring after all. For it was he who intervened when, maybe preoccupied with the theme of death and the worries pertaining to it, Misra couldn’t speak of any passion other than the one lodged in the centre of her heart — the passion to live! Maybe also Askar remembered the rule of their house in Kallafo — that no one should speak of death. He could forgive Salaado for doing so — but he had to set things right and quickly too. And: “You’ve always had a passion to see the sea, no?” he addressed Misra, surprising himself not so much as he pleased Salaado and Hilaal. “You’ve always had a passion to see the ocean.”

A little resigned, she said, “That’s true.”

“Then we shall go, all four of us, to Jezira, shall we?” Salaado said to Askar, meaning that she was sure she, Hilaal and Misra would definitely go, but would he?

And before he said, “Let’s”, the necessary preparations were under way — Hilaal had entered the kitchen to slice bread and cheese for a possible picnic and Salaado had disappeared into their bedroom to bring out towels, swimming-trunks, etc. She returned after a while, reminding Askar he should bring his and two towels, one for himself and another for Misra. “But she doesn’t know how to swim,” he said, half-shouting.

She hushed him. “Never mind,” she said, after a brief pause. “Get something for her, it doesn’t really matter. And let us get going so we can be at Jezira and return before it is dark.”

They went their separate ways and converged in the living-room, Hilaal had a carrier-bag in his hand and they knew what it contained. And Misra? She was standing against the furthest wall as though she were part of it, or as though she were a carpet, rolled up and standing against the wall. And she saw them as a threesome, she saw herself apart from them: she was sick, they were not; she wasn’t a Somali and they were. Only after Askar went to her did she move away from the comer where she had been.

“Are you all right?” he said.

She nodded. Her eyes, Askar could see, were on his hands. Of what was she afraid? Of what was she suspicious? he thought to himself. He was much taller, much heftier — he was her cosmos, he said to himself. Just the way she used to be his when he was a great deal younger. He extended a friendly hand out to her. At first, she wouldn’t take it. He looked over his right shoulder and saw Hilaal and Salaado nervously watching them, neither saying anything lest they disturbed them. “Come on,” he said, this time extending to her only his little finger, as if to a child. And she took it.

They walked level for several paces. She was the child, he the adult. “You do want to come to the ocean, don’t you?” he asked, aware that he was addressing her like a child; aware there was a streak of condescension in his voice.

“Yes,” she said.

He said, “I will teach you to swim if you wish.”

She nodded.

Again, he was addressing her like a child, “Is there anything you wish passionately to see when we are at the sea? Anything else you’ve always wished to see?”

They were standing in front of Hilaal and Salaado. And they became conscious of how each spoke, how each responded. Now they were playing to an audience, they had to be careful Consequently there seeped into their voices an awareness of the outside world, of Salaado and Hilaal, an awareness of their own past together, an awareness of the other in each of them.

“I would very much like to see a shark,’ she said,

Hilaal thought, what an impossible request to make. I wish I could make it happen. I wish I could take her to an aquarium — if only there were one in Mogadiscio. But why a shark? And Salaado thought, I like this woman’s imagination, it is wide, it is encompassing, it is inclusive, it is larger than the world of which she isn’t an integral part. Why a shark? Because she is dissatisfied with the little she’s been offered and wants more, feels she is entitled to be given more and will do the best she can to acquire more. What an imagination! As for Askar, his thoughts led him away from the territory of reason to one in which he was a small child asking if it was possible for a boy to menstruate? Or if it was possible to meet “death” face to face and survive? He saw in her request a yearning, a passion for a past long gone.

After a long pause, Salaado said, “It is not every day one sees sharks in these parts. But we can go to behind the Xamar Slaughter House, the newly built one, and there we’re likely to see a shark. In fact, the story goes that a woman swam while menstruating heavily and thus attracted a shark’s passionate attentions and he made of her a morsel — that was all”

Silence. When Askar looked at Misra, he found her quietly standing in another comer, sulking. She was like a rolled carpet tied with a rope at both ends, leaning against the wall She stared ahead of herself, trembling a little, perhaps at the thought that she would be fed, as the menstruating woman (or rather as a sacrificial beast?) to the famished sharks behind the Xamar Slaughter House? She didn’t say anything. She took the little finger offered her by Askar, whom she found to be friendly

“Shall we go?” he said, his finger secure in Misra’s grip.