Nuruddin Farah - Maps

As though it were an afterbirth, the sky lay in the secundine of the sea’s womb, it having been expelled in the act of parturition. And Uncle and I sat in the car, with the wipers going flik-flaag , one of them fast, the other limply slow and half-broken, and it poured very, very heavily with rain. I couldn’t tell why we were where we were, there was no reason I could give why Uncle Hilaal had decided to go in that direction. Could it be that we were both upset by the news that Misra had disappeared from her hospital bed? Perhaps “disappeared” is not the right word. Perhaps “taken away” is the right expression. But you have to know something in order to express it well, you have to have evidence so that you may describe things well or know what to do, or, for that matter, decide whether to think badly of someone, or a group of persons. Could it be, for instance, that she was kidnapped by the people whom she thought ill of, because she believed that they suspected her of betrayal?

“But what is one to do?” he would say every now and then, when we were both sadly silent for a long time. His look in my direction read like pages of appeal to me and it wasn’t difficult to decipher it. It read, “Since you've known her longest, since you know her a lot better than I, please tell me what to do.” In other words, he wanted me to be his guide in this.

However, it didn’t take long for it to come out that I didn’t know under what name she had entered the country and hadn’t bothered to ask her who her own contacts in Mogadiscio were. It was only then that one began to regret; that one said what should've been done in the first place; how I should Ve been kinder, more sensitive, more understanding; that Uncle should Ve been more inquisitive and, in a sense, tougher in his dealings with her and if need be more bureaucratically minded. And Salaado? Uncle and I appeared lost without her. It oc-curred to me that he was most definitely unhappy because she wasn’t with him to suggest what next course of action to take. We had driven around for quite a while looking for her. We had been to our house at least three times. We had called at the school where she taught and the principal said she had gone shopping. Since we didn’t know what she was buying, we didn’t know what market to go to when searching for her. As a matter of fact, while driving around. Uncle suggested I keep my eyes wide open just in case “she” was also walking amongst other people, in one direction or another. The “she” my eyes were intent on spotting was not “Salaado” but “Misra”. Although I thought things might have been eased a great deal once we saw Salaado. How we needed her, Uncle and I!

At the hospital, they said, three men had come and “taken her away” because “they” argued “she” wanted to go. When asked, Misra gave the response, herself, in the affirmative to the nurse. Did she look threatened, tortured, did she appear at all frightened? had inquired Uncle HilaaL The nurse wondered why she should have. Why should a woman leaving hospital of her own accord appear frightened? the nurse had argued. Of course not. “She was, to me, a woman ready to go for a quick dip in the sea,” said the nurse. “The three men were carrying towels — or something like towels anyway, and they were dressed in casual clothes and were addressing her in a friendly manner, each teasing the other and she, in turn, teasing them too.” (I wished I could've asked the nurse what language Misra and the men had communicated in, but I thought better of it because it might not have made any sense to her.) When did she leave the hospital grounds and how? No one knew in what — maybe a taxi, maybe a private car. The time recorded by the nurse on duty was precise to the second — eight thirty-five in the morning. Before the ward’s doctor made the rounds.

“What are we to do?” Uncle said.

We were still in the car and it was pouring with the heaviest of downpours I had seen in years. I thought he had looked, not in my direction, but at the sea when asking the question and I wondered why!

“Suppose they kidnapped her?” I said.

He was suddenly conscious of one thing — that perhaps there was nothing we could do — and he looked most unhappy “Well, in that case, well have to revise our strategy, won’t we? We must find out how best we can save her life. That is most essential. Save her life.”

“How?” I said.

He was relieved that it began to rain less heavily. He switched off the noisy wipers and sighed loudly. He drummed on the dashboard of the car, staring away from me, in silent concentration. “We could go to the National Security and ask that they intervene. I have some friends. I can tell them the whole truth, tell them it is a matter of life and death. In the meantime, we inquire around, see if we know anyone who might know anyone from Kallafo who might know the kidnappers.”

I was about to say something in disagreement when, suddenly, I tasted blood in my mouth again. I rubbed my tongue against the front of my teeth, down and under them too and tasted my saliva which, in my mind, was white, as spittle generally is. Without giving due thought to the consequences, I placed my cupped hands in front of me and spat into them, only to see that the saliva was actually not affected by the taste in my mouth. My uncle was puzzled. I wouldn’t help him at first. I spat out again. And saw, to my great relief, that it wasn’t red as blood.

“What are you doing?” he finally said, when he realized that I had repeated the process a number of times. “Are you all right?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

My tongue, in the meantime, was busy working the mouth and tasting the saliva, which the rubbing act had produced. “There is the taste of blood in my mouth,” I told him.

“Blood?”

“Yes, blood.”

“In your saliva, there is the taste of blood?” he asked, worried.

He seemed anxious about finding a link between the taste in my mouth and Misra’s disappearance. He reflected for a long time. He had an exuberance of expression, one moment delighted at discovering a link in his head; the following moment, unhappy because he couldn’t pursue the idea any further. He said, “Is this the first time ever?”

And he didn’t let me answer him. He held me by the chin, saying, “Open your mouth and let me see,” and was breathing heavily into my face, making me feel ill at ease. “Move your tongue around,” he said. I did as requested. “But it is white,” he suggested. “Your saliva is white. How can you taste blood in it?” he challenged.

I sensed in Uncle’s voice a helplessness, but I remained silent. It made me sad that I couldn’t explain to him the workings of my own body, that I couldn’t give him the reason why this most illogical of occurrences had taken place. Could I claim to know Misra better than anyone else when I didn’t know my own body, when I couldn’t determine what made me taste, in my white saliva, the redness of blood? I was sad that I couldn’t say, “This is I. This is my body. Let me explain how it works, why it behaves the way it does.” Or had I underestimated my body? Was it seceding from me, making its own autonomous decisions, was my body forming its own government, was it working on its own, independent of my brain, of my soul? Did we have to go to an arbitrator, say, a doctor, a psychoanalyst, who would determine why it was I had tasted blood in my saliva that day, in Kallafo, many years ago, at the same time as I jumped up in glee because Misra had seen and foretold a future, my future. Was my future in blood? Would I kill? Would I avenge the martyred warriors of Kallafo and therefore “drink” the blood of the one I kill?

Uncle Hilaal sat back, resigned. He said, “What do we do?”