Nuruddin Farah - Maps

He repeated the question louder and expected the patient would repeat her answer louder too. “I said, I have no children.” (And someone shouted, “A bad eye.”)

“What’s the name of your husband, the full name please?”

The woman answered, “I am a widow My husband died in the Ogaden war.”

“And you have no children?” repeated the shaman.

The woman-patient said, “That’s right.”

You could tell from his voice that he was pleased his patient spoke somebody’s name; that she claimed to be somebody else with a name and an address; that he had convinced all those present of his expertise. “Please tell the congregation here, why you've chosen to take residence” in Waliima Sheikh? Do you know her? Have you ever met, you and Waliima? Are you envious of her, her children and life style?”

“You might say that I've known Waliima Sheikh from when we played house-and-family together as girls and you would be right if you assumed that I’ve coveted her her marriage, her wealth, her children and her good looks. I married badly, she well; I left school early, she finished at hers and did well by it.”

He put more and more questions to the woman-patient until it became obvious another was speaking through her; another , with a different name and address; another, whose voice interfered with the proceedings, for it emanated from a different other . Could a good person live in an utterly bad one? you ask yourself, your imagination overwhelmed by the thought that this was possible. Could Misra hide in you? Could another dwell in her?

The world of the unknown had greater potentials, you thought, and lost interest in the mundanities of what the priest-doctor was saying or what wicked actions the audience was prescribing as punishment for the woman who, out of jealousy, “took residence” in another ;

Do you remember?

V

There was a flood.

And you floated. You floated, heavy as a corpse, asleep to the end of the world. You floated easterly towards the sea. You remember someone saying there would no longer be any more rebirths, or renewals of any sort. Millions of people had lost their lives and property in the flood, but then everyone agreed this didn’t matter, for this was the end of the world and the flood was to mark the end-of-the-world’s beginning. And when a woman who had floated beside you for days asked what you were doing, you responded that you had come to bury yourself in the water. You said you would blow out the light and, in the total darkness surrounding you, you would expire. You prophesied that a heavy downpour of successive floods would fall from the heavens, joining the earth and the sky, obliterating from everybody’s memory all the dreamt dreams, and there would be no past, no present and no future. Then you turned to the woman who had earlier asked you why you were there and you inquired of her why she too was there. She said, “My husband and I are in the business of building tombs on seabeds.” You took a fresher look at the woman. And you put a name to her face.

You were spat by the flood, as though you were an uprooted weed on the bank of a river, green with young foliage — foliage whose chaotic message you couldn’t follow. There, you were met by an old man who, in a big way, reminded you of Aw-Adan, but also, in a small way, looked like your younger tutor, Cusmaan. Suddenly, the heavens darkened and all you could see was the man’s grey hair, bushy and also silvery Then the man put his hand into his pocket and he gave you a knife. You dared not ask the man what you were supposed to do with the knife, but you said, surprising even yourself, “But why the flood?” And the old man with the white head said, “Floods are a product of a common bad.” Now do you remember, or have you chosen, as usual, to remember only the good things, deciding to forget the bad?

Anyway!

You were surrounded by darkness. You were surrounded by multitudinous water. Inside the water, you passed more water, your own water that is, as though you were expected to make a contribution, however small. And there shone in the sky a fairly young moon, beautiful as a maiden’s face. The sea was green as the silver of a mirror and you could see your own shadow on the tinier crests your body’s movements created. You had bloodshot eyes, but you didn’t know because you couldn’t see it yourself. You were alone, but you didn’t think about it and you didn’t feel at all lonely You would dive every now and then, and reach the bottom of the deep, deep sea, and whenever you came out to take another lungful of fresh air, you felt as if you were an entirely different person. Tired from swimming alone, you went to sit by a sand-dune near the sea.

It was light already — dawn had broken.

And there was a young boy, barely ten, who was meditatively busy washing clean a skull. He was performing his task with absolute devotion — you could tell from the way he breathed, you could see the concentration on his face, you could sense, without touching him, the tension in his own body. The skull was that of a human. But you couldn’t determine, even when you held it in your hands, whether it had belonged to a small person or a heavily built man or woman. Yin could decide, without taking undue risk, that it had been there for years. For one thing, plants had begun to sprout in it. For another, the colour had worn off its cheekbone, which had grown a shade browner.

You watched in reverent silence.

The young boy dipped it wholly in the water, removing the grains of sand which had been lodging in there. He shook it a little too roughly, emptying it of life. As he held it away from himself, the young boy watched, with utter amazement (or was it amusement?) as the insects moved, in a fury of fright and frenzy, as they scattered here and there — like a cinema crowd running confusedly down the exit stairway because the safety-curtain had caught fire. When he was satisfied that he had emptied it of life of all forms, he dipped it again in water, soaped it again and again until it was as white as the foams the sea frothed at his feet. From where you stood, you could read the letter “M” tattooed on the skull in blue. And you provided the missing letters ofthat name — just as you had earlier put a name to a face you had seen.

Do you remember any of that?

You don’t? How very weird!

You asked the young boy why he was washing the skull clean. As if in response to you, he dipped it in water and drank from it. You stared at him in total bewilderment.

He said, “There is life in death, there is death in life.”

Not only that he said nothing original, but the fact that you didn’t ask him anything — this, perhaps, made you stare at him in a hostile manner. Then he explained, “This skull belonged to a man who raped his own daughter. He died in old age, a hated man, a man without friends, a man alienated from his own community. For years, he saw dreams in which he wore a young girl’s face. He died in a tempestuous flood,’

At least, admit you remember this.

You don’t?

Your memory, dare I say? is very selective!

VI

You swam through the gate of purgatory and washed clean your doubts in the waters of certainty. You were penurious in your comments, but, once it was suggested by Uncle, you agreed to call at the hospital where Misra had undergone an operation in which she lost a breast. (Her state of mind was such that she couldn’t determine how she “felt”. “Perhaps more like a man,” she said, half-laughing, “now that I have to have the chest bandaged forever.”) She lay in hospital, pained. You called on her, doubtful of your own reactions. You sat by her and held her hand in yours — you hardly knew what to say. Your conversations, needless to say, were replete with empty silences, unfilled spaces, incomplete dots, and inconsistent holding on to, or letting go of, certain consonants, before you pronounced the vowels preceding them clearly and accurately.