Nuruddin Farah - Maps

I nodded my head; Hilaal, his.

She said, “Expressing regret, Misra told me (I don’t know why she chose to confide in me and not Askar or you, Hilaal, but there we are — perhaps because I am a woman and you’re not — who knows!) anyway …”

Hilaal said, “What did she tell you?” and he was anxious.

“She told me that she had lived with a man, in Kallafo, an ‘Ethiopian’, please do not forget the inverted commas. He was a lieu-tenant, handsome, as Karin had accurately described him. Also, he came from the village that Misra was bom in. The two of them had shared a similar beginning — he was the ‘boy’ the Amhara nobleman had been searching for, the issue of a damoz union between the nobleman and the boy’s mother. As happens, generally in Indian films, they didn’t know of their beginnings until after they had fallen in love and lived together for nearly two years. Misra explained that she had withheld from him her origins and had given him the name of a different village right from the start. He was younger than her by a few years, was an Addis city boy, one who had attended the cosmopolitan city’s best schools — which was why, naturally, he was interested in his starting point. The story is much more complicated…” and she took a break from talking and looked from one to the other.

“Naturally. Incest is complicated and complex,” said Hilaal.

“You see, a number of things began to occur to her following your departure, Askar. One positive thing was that her periods were no longer escorted by excruciating pains as before. Nobody could tell her why. Another was, she had plenty of time, suddenly, and didn’t know what to do with it. That was when she met this young man.”

“The Romeo of Juliet, a dashing, handsome young man,” said Hilaal.

“He was seen entering or leaving her compound. She was seen with him in public. He was known to be a cruel man, insisting that they raze to the ground villages harbouring pro-Somali saboteurs. Defeat had already created disharmony among the Kallafo townspeople. And so, when the massacre took place, Misra said, she became the primary suspect. People said she had led him and his men to the hiding-place of the martyred WSLF warriors. But she swore on Askar’s life that she didn’t.”

Suddenly, the beetroot in my mouth tasted bitter. Not only was its colour red, but it tasted of blood, too. I was worried I might bring it up if I opened my mouth or tried to say something.

Hilaal asked, “Is her version different from Karin’s?”

“Not different in substance but different in their conclusions.’.

Hilaal continued, “She says she wasn’t there when the massacre took place and wasn’t the one who had led her Romeo to the hiding-place of the Liberation Front fighters?”

“Obviously,” said Salaado.

“We won’t know, will we?”

“I am afraid, no.”

There was a long silence. I rushed into the nearest toilet and found a basin. I was sick, but not for long. I lay in bed, flanked by Hilaal and Salaado. He was telling the story of man’s beginning-point — incest.

“If you believe in the Adam-Eve story in the Koran or the Bible, well, then there’s an aspect of it.” And his face darkened in wrinkled concentration. “I don’t know if it is Islamic or Somali, but there is the myth that Eve gave birth only to twins, a boy and a girl in quick succession, in order to populate the earth. Now the twins bom together, it is said, swapped the boys and girls with the sets immediately after them. But the day came when one of the twins, namely Cain, fell in love with his co-twin, whose stars had predicted was to become Abel’s wife. Cain didn’t want to swap. To marry her, he killed, committing the first murder, but not the first incest.”

“And that’s where we all began?” asked Salaado.

“Yes. If you consider Adam ‘giving birth’ to Eve, in a manner of speaking. After all, she was created from his rib, flesh and blood — in him, her beginning. Adam’s beginnings are in the command (i.e. the Word): Be! And he became . He was.”

I yawned. They left the room.

VI

I couldn’t help thinking that Salaado was inwardly happy that Misra had disappeared, although she hoped nothing bad would happen to her. To me, she was indulgently sweet, making no comments or references to my intended departure and no allusions to my romance with Riyo. As a matter of fact, it was Salaado who had the foresight to suggest that we leave our doors open. And she literally meant that — keep all doors wide open, just in case Misra returned when we were asleep. Misra pervaded our thoughts. This reminded me of my infant days — then I was deeply attached to her; then, our doors were left open. Nothing else meant anything: Maps; the Ogaden itself was reduced to a past so far away it occupied no space in my mind. Only Misra! All because she disappeared and because we didn’t know what had happened to her.

It transpired that we didn’t have her particulars. To the bewilderment of Hilaal and Salaado, it became obvious I didn’t know her father’s name. I knew the name of the Jigjigaawi man who raised her, then married her and who, in the end, she murdered. Surely, she couldn’t have used his name as her father’s! Then someone remembered that she had entered the country in disguise, under another name. What name was that? The one I knew her by, spelt as Misra or variations of it? Or the one Karin gave me? Even if we wanted, we had no name to report to the police as a “Missing Person”, nor did we have one to release to the press. Misra? Massar? Masrat? Massarat? What name can we find you under and where?

Sadly, I concluded I didn’t know Misra. I said so.

“No, wait,” Uncle said. But his voice had undergone a frightening change — it was like a person cut in two halves — you would want to look for the missing half. He added, “Let us not despair. Let us think.”

We were clumsy in the views we offered, we were helpless and misguided in our predictions. Salaado, at one time, set the dinner-table for four while Hilaal prepared the meal. We sat and waited, our eyes downcast as though we were saying grace. The wind spoke to us; the wind knocked on our doors which were not even shut, the wind made us go to the windows behind which we stood, our eyes, this time, scouring the space ahead of us, our minds attentive to any changing shadows, expectantly waiting for Misra to turn up and say, “I am sorry, I meant to tell you that I was going to call on a friend.” Each of us prophesied what would happen, but in each, she was alive and was well; in each she complained of a small irritant pain in the legs or the area surrounding the removed breast or her groin. Never did any of us suggest that she had died, or tell a story predicting that she might have been killed.

Suddenly, with a fury I had never associated with her, Salaado said, “We cannot be sitting here and speculating about the poor woman. We must do something.”

“What?” asked Uncle Hilaal/

Salaado was up on her feet and saying, “Well go to the police station.”

“And report Misra”s disappearance?”

Salaado very determinedly said, “Why not!”

“Too early. The police will say it is too early, that well have to wait for a couple of days or more. You can’t report someone as missing until after a reasonable period of time,” Uncle Hilaal said, his voice sounding emaciated.

Salaado wouldn’t be persuaded. The woman, she argued, didn’t know anybody else in Mogadiscio and was our guest. She was not well and couldn”t be said to have decided to go out for a walk or for a rendezvous with someone, she was in no position to do either. Three men, unknown to her, forced their way to her private ward, for which we were paying, and they frog-marched her out of the hospital.