Nuruddin Farah - Maps

You remembered that, in the hospital corridor just before you entered her private ward, you had seen a young boy, aged five, walk into the Ladies’, escorted by his mother. You remembered thinking how, in sex, age mattered greatly. The women in the hospital’s Ladies’, you suspected, didn’t mind having amongst them a Homo sapiens of the male gender so long as he was small and as yet underdeveloped in so far as the male ego was concerned. And neither did Misra bother about you, when you were such a small boy yourself. Now, you could see how self-conscious she was, how prudent in her self-preservation, how cautious in her mannerisms, how womanly aware of the man in you. If you were honest with yourself, you would’ve requested that she showed you how much of the breast the doctor had removed — and you almost did so. Which was how you knew she couldn’t tell whether it was the left or the right the surgeon’s knife had eaten into. Should she make a display of it in the way those returning from the Ogaden war had exhibited the stump of the leg, the grazed forehead or the broken nose-joint? Should she, or should she not blame it on the war as everybody had blamed every misfortune or misdeed that befell him or her?

You said, your hand resting near her kneecap, “And how have things been with you?”

She spoke of what worried her: that she thought the nurse attending to her was related to someone from Kallafo and that she was mortally worried that the nurse might report on her or poison her food or mix wrongly, but deliberately (although it might appear innocently) all her medicines so she would take them and die of the poisonous mixture. But how was she certain that the nurse knew of her background? Because of the way she asked questions about Kallafo “without my ever mentioning the name of that accursed town, without my ever saying that I came from that wretched place”. This was what made her think that a woman with whom the nurse had spoken amicably was related to a male patient in an adjacent ward, a man who had come from the war in the Ogaden “without his manhood, for a bomb had blown off his testicles. And what use can a man make of a penis without testicles?” she asked, underlining, in her voice, the words “penis” and “testicles”.

Should I not tell that the nurse knew she was from Kallafo because Uncle Hilaal was the one who had filled in the form and that he had been told he might, in the end, persuade the hospital authorities to give a deduction on the basis of the patient’s coming from Kallafo? you thought to yourself.

“You believe that I am paranoid?” she asked.

You said, “Of course not.”

Would you help her if she were in terrible need? she inquired of you. Would you keep watch on the movements of people if this became absolutely necessary? Would you spill your own blood to save her? Would you kill those who were plotting to do her in? Of course you would. You wouldn’t take them to court or anything, but you would use the knife they had used to kill her in order to take vengeance? But you caught your breath with a view to slowing down the pace of the conversation and you asked why it mattered whether you would take her murderers to court or kill them yourself with your own hands and with the same weapon as they had used? She reasoned that almost all the courts in Somalia would set the culprits free because they had killed, on suspicion, a woman who was not Somali herself and whose innocence was harder to believe or even to account for.

“Be truthful,” you began to say, deliberately slowly “Be truthful and tell me what I must know if I must take vengeance. Did you or did you not do it? Be truthful.”

She shifted in her bed and you let go her hand. You could sense she had moved into that undefined space between a smile and a cry. She held her head up lest her nose dripped, lest her eyes emptied themselves of the tears welled up in them. She remained motionless but tense, the way one might when one is anticipating one’s system to emit a storm of a sneeze when one is in respectable company without a clean handkerchief.

“To think that you might suspect me of betraying” she said, once she could speak. “I would have thought myself incapable of doing any such wicked thing until somebody said I had done it.”

You didn’t say anything.

“To think that you could even suspect me of betraying…” And then she burst into tears, shaking a little. You held her hand tighter in yours, for you could feel the tremor in her body, you could sense the torment in her pained soul.

After a pause, you said, “Who was it that accused you of being a traitor?”

“That most wretched, most wicked man,” she swore.

“What’s his name?”

You could see how it hurt when she said, “That most sinful man.”

“His name?”

Again, she tilted her head forward so her chest wouldn’t pain her most awfully, you thought. And her body emitted a tremor that was total, like an earthquake’s. You were both in a room, somewhere in Kallafo, and it was you who was taking your body’s pained measurements, your body’s space, as the guide in your dealings with other people, for it was you who had been in pain.

She said, “I had trusted him, how I trusted him.”

“His name?” you said, speaking like one who would kill.

She finally said, “Aw-Adan.”

There was suddenly a power cut. The room became hot and stuffy and you couldn’t think of anything to say. Neither could she.

VII

A week later, when she was still in hospital, you showed Uncle Hilaal and Salaado your first completed drawing, because you thought you were satisfied with it. In it, there is a man of about sixty, with a loincloth for a wrapper, and he has, sitting on his lap, a hen. The man’s features clearly indicate his origin — he’s an Adenese. Behind him, there is a guava orchard and, standing purposelessly about, there are a few young boys, aged between ten and fifteen. It is obvious that the boys are waiting for something. But they are all looking up — some, evidently, at the blue sky, a sky peaceful as it is inviting; others at a hill upon whose most northern point is hoisted a mast flying a white flag.

To the left of the Adenese-looking man with the pointed features, there is a woman, larger than a quarter of the canvas. The woman’s body is divided into four squares and in each square, the artist manages to place an appropriate image. In one, a horseman is dropped to the floor and the horse rides the wind, eastwards; in another, a man in priestly robes is counting money, and re-counting it so he will at least get that right; in a third, there is an infant cradled in innocence and his stare dissolves in tears — but one can see where his stare is focused — at the huge woman; and in the furthest square, that is the fourth, the infant has grown bigger and is lying down on his chest and is learning to shoot a rifle. His eyes are now fixed on the hill above him.

To the east of the woman, the ocean. And at its shores, a festive crowd, shouting slogans of victory. Everybody here is looking at the sky. The day is bright with light but there is a solitary star and it is displaying only three of its five points. Is every member of this festive crowd wondering why all the star’s points aren’t there, why they have been amputated and by whom?

Further east but northerly, there is a young man posed in quiet elegance. He is big now. Slung round his shoulders, a gun. And beside him lies a woman who is in pain. To her left, blood. To her right, a knife, stained with caked blood.

VIII

A few days later, you did something you had never done before. You brought a girl home with you and took her to your room. The girl’s name was Riyo. She was a classmate of yours. Often, you went to her place. But today, you came to yours because her parents’ house was busy with people coming and going, for some event was taking place there and she didn’t have to attend it. Riyo was a year younger than you but you liked her a lot because she hardly ever asked you questions and you were gentle with each other. She helped you with your English, which she spoke almost like a native. She had been bom in Britain, where her father had done his higher education. She was weak in maths and physics and you drew her maps for her when your geography teacher assigned one as your homework.