Nuruddin Farah - Maps

“She is a woman,” said Salaado.

A briefer pause, and he was moving round his spiral thinking, ascending now, descending now, describing vividly the poetic feud which involved the Sayyid and a number of detractors including one unheard-of English poet who entered the feud with a contribution “veined as the romantic arm extended out to the victim who must be cajoled before he is dealt the final blow. For example.”

And there came a chorus of complaints. “Wait, wait.”

You heard drumming. You thought of the mingis ceremony. Salaado nodded her head in your direction and said, “She’s resting for a while, but she says she will come with you.”

Cusmaan was saying, “Ethiopia, let me for-example you, Hilaal, has never been colonized. Her national language, although spoken by a minority, has had a script from long before Christ. And yet, how is it that this country that has been independent all through the ages of documented history this Ethiopia whose population is ten times that of Somalia’s; this Ethiopia, with a script from long before Christ — how is it that Ethiopia has not produced one poet, ancient or contemporary relying either on the oral or the written form, one single Ethiopian genius of a poet, who is comparable to Somalia’s hundreds of major poets that Somalis can field?”

“Don’t be ethnocentric. That’s all I say. Of course, being independent for a hundred years didn’t get Liberia into the same bracket as Ethiopia. No one can explain these things. How, for example, does it happen that two-thirds of Somalia’s major poets come from the Ogaden and the Haud?”

Silence. And the voice of the master of mingis ceremony singing, right in the heart of Mogadiscio, in a language definitely not Somali — this fact alone deserved a body of study and research work. The masters or mistresses of these ceremonies chant in the language the spirits understand — and that language is not Somali. It is Boran. Just as voodoo ceremonies in Haiti are conducted in Yoruba and not in the language of the island, Creole.

“Let’s go,” Misra said to you.

IV

You were admitted into a large room and there were many people and there was a great deal of toing and froing, with a stream of men and women entering or leaving. The neighbour’s wife had been ill for some time. According to the shamanistic prescription, the woman would have th influenced for the better, and they would leave her, if a white-tailed sheep was slaughtered; if the blood was smeared all over her body; and if she submitted herself trustfully to the incantantory rite of dancing and singing for three solid days and nights. The neighbour, an Xamari, was very wealthy and he loved his wife, who was his youngest. He didn’t mind the expense. He agreed to pay the priest-doctore spirits in her a handsome fee and would probably buy him an air ticket to and from Mecca. Also, the man refused to analyse or comment on the religious and philosophical contradictions surrounding his activities. He was a colleague of Salaado’s, he was, by anybody’s standards, a knowledgeable man, and was the son of a well-to-do Xamari family

You and Misra, on being invited, went and watched the dance as you might have watched any theatrical performance — no more. But you didn’t understand the language in which they sang, you couldn’t decipher the chant. The language was definitely not Somali, Did Misra understand? You were surprised how much she was able to comprehend. And the woman-patient danced and danced and danced; and the priest-doctor challenged the spirits, asking that they name themselves — at least identify themselves, at least say whether they were human or jinn — and she danced and danced and danced.

“What’s the name of the woman?” asked Misra,

His voice, loud, overpowered the drumming and he said, “Waliima Sheikh,”

Impatient, the priest-doctor beckoned to the drummers to beat softer, slower. And he took the woman’s hand, then held her by the shoulders and he started shaking her and shouting, “Tell us who you are. Are you jinn or human? And what do you want?”

The woman danced and danced and danced.

The priest-doctor asked, “Now, who are you? We haven’t much time nor patience. We’ll deliver you from the diabolical demands of the evil spirits who’ve apparently taken residence in you. So who are you?”

And the woman stopped dancing altogether. The drumming ceased too.

As if exhausted, the woman-patient began to speak, but her voice wasn’t loud enough and nothing save the first part of the sentence could be heard clearly But the “I am… I am”, which evidently was heard by everybody, did generate a great deal of interest and hope in the hearts and minds of the audience. The priest-doctor concentrated intensely on the forehead of his patient as though his powers would drill through to her brain cells and this would help him, in the end, to solve the shamanistic riddle of what jinn or human could be so obstinate as to have withstood his probing for forty-eight hours. Presently, he signalled to the drummers to resume their drumming and they did as instructed. As more dancers encircled the woman-patient, the priest-doctor left the floor for his throne on the left-hand side of what was once the wife’s living-room. But he rose again immediately as if he sat on thorns, and he was moving in the direction of his patient and saying, “I will punish you severely if you don’t tell us who you are,” and was shaking her body as though fruits, small as jinns or large as human eyeballs, would drop to the floor and he would just pick them up and make a gift of them to the patient’s husband who was seated in another comer, on the right-hand side of the room.

You were not sure “who” the priest-doctor was addressing; you were not sure “who” he would punish severely — the woman-as-human or the spirit in the woman. After all, you knew the woman’s name and you hoped the priest-doctor knew her human name too, or even if he didn’t, the husband was there to remind him, or one of the neighbours. But then, what confounded you more was that he was now whipping her and was repeating loudly, again and again, the sentence, “Just tell the congregation your name, address and, if possible, your profession. Are you a man, are you a woman or are you a child? Are you human or jinn?”

She stopped dancing and her head dropped to her chin — the way toys’ heads do when the springs which hold them fail or snap. The drumming stopped. Everybody listened.

“Your name, sex, profession and address?” repeated the priest-doctor.

The woman finally said, “I am Deeqo Amin.”

“And where do you live?” said the priest-doctor.

Silence. Meantime, the congregation repeated, in various manners, the name the patient mentioned. Somebody cursed “Deeqo”, another wished her hell, here and in the hereafter, but many waited before they pronounced their verdict. “Where do you live?”

You remembered the cuudis ceremony in Kallafo, the one in which Karin gave a name different from her real one, and her identity as that of a man. Mingis! Cuudis! And you thought about the Egyptian Zaar and about the Mogadiscian’s Beehe and Booràn . You asked yourself, But who are we? Are we the jinn who dwell inside “us” from time to time? Or are we always the human beings that we claim to be? What proportions of us are human and what jinn? Now the woman was shouting, “I live in the Medina quarter of Xamar,” a statement she repeated thrice.

The priest-doctor waited for that to sink in. Then, “And how many children have you?”

“I have none.” The members of the audience mumbled something to one another.