Nuruddin Farah - Maps

“How’s he?” she asked Hilaal, as though he were not present or couldn’t understand Somali or was hard of hearing or was deaf. The conversation, in fact, went on like this for a while.

Gently, Hilaal said, “He’s asking questions.”

“Why he wasn’t told of the burial?”

“And of the funeral too.”

Salaado began, “Well, he wasn’t in a …” and then stopped, realizing he was there, right in front of her, propped up in bed, with a book in hand, using his index finger as a page marker,

Hilaal said, “Speak to him.”

She felt awkward, like somebody gossiping about a person — imagine that person turning up and hearing everything said about him. The lump of embarrassment in her throat didn’t clear for a long time. Then, “We were worried, let’s face it,” and she addressed herself to Hilaal, primarily to Hilaal, who looked away and at Askar. “The slightest tremors shake you. You’re like moist earth at the centre — soft. We were worried what you might do if you saw her mutilated body and what that might do to you for the rest of your life.”

Askar looked at Hilaal. Did he want Uncle to confirm what Salaado had said? Hilaal remained silent, like a husband whose cues have been taken by his wife. “Mutilated? Her body was mutilated?”

Salaado nodded, yes.

“But you said not even sharks touched her?” he said to Salaado. Then to Hilaal, “You were there when she said that. The day of the eclipse. The day she prayed, and you fell ill, and I was well.”

Hilaal reiterated Salaado’s worry. “Yes, we were worried. For example. You were taken ill during the tragic weekend when the Ethiopians, helped by their Cuban, Adenese and Soviet allies, reoccu-pied the Ogaden. The slightest earth tremor shakes you, the slightest gives you the shock of an earthquake, your temperature runs high, your blood pressure goes up, your eyes become bloodshot — and we don’t know what to do.” And he hugged Salaado and when their bodies had the shape of a bracket, one of them took his right hand, the other his left and the three of them formed a circle.

As they retook their respective seats, Askar said, “Tell me how her body was mutilated? Tell me all. What was missing? Why? Tell me all. Tell me everything you know.”

They consulted discreetly. Salaado was the first to speak. Hilaal would stay directly behind her and would help, confirming her story if need be, changing it slightly if necessary “We suspect there may have been foul play of a wicked kind,” said she, her voice shaken, like someone regretting he had said more than he intended. A pause. She turned to Hilaal. It was obvious she was seeking his assistance. “Please,” she said, taking his hand.

Hilaal took over. “The heart was missing. For example,” And he unclasped his hand from Salaado’s grip. “We suspect they performed a ritual murder on her body. Perhaps we are wrong. We haven’t the evidence. But the removal of the heart took place before she was tossed into the ocean — already dead. That is, if we’re to take our suspicions very seriously.”

Askar knew that when one of them talked, the other kept an eye on him. His expressions were under scrutiny, his movements, his gestures were being studied for clues as to what he might do. He was all right. He could prove to them that he was. He asked, “What did they say at the mortuary?”

Hilaal said, “For example. In view of the complications involved, not knowing how not to have you go through the traumatic experience of court cases, police interrogations and other related bureaucratic tortures, we decided — in view of the political trapdoors which would open, let you in but keep us locked out or vice versa — in view of all this, we decided not to raise the issue of ritual murder, or a missing heart or a mutilated corpse. But we could not deny that she existed, that she was who she was… er… to you, that she became whom… er… you had suspected her to have become and that you are to us … er… who you’ve been — a son. In view of this, for example, we decided, Salaado and I, that is, as though we believed we had your consent too — we decided, we would not raise these burning questions or ask for an investigation team to be appointed and a case opened — no. It pained our conscience, for instance, but we committed an unforgivable felony.”

Askar asked, “What’s that?”

“We bribed the technicians at the mortuary to silence them,” he said, his tone sad, adding, “You might well ask why we did all this? We did it so that the healing wounds in your soul won’t get festered again. In other words, we did this for the good of all concerned. Considering, as I said before, for example, the bureaucratic, political and other complications. And conscience too.”

Salaado agreed, “Yes,” and looked up as though she were reading the transcript of Hilaal’s aforespoken statement. “We talked about it, yes. It pained our conscience, but that was the best we could do, we thought.”

“That’s right,” said Hilaal, who was in a supporting role, agreeing with Salaado in turn. Askar wondered — had they rehearsed all this before they called on him?

“Do we know who they are?” he asked, speaking soberly.

Salaado said, “Not any more than you know.”

“I don’t,” he said.

“Neither do we,” said Hilaal

And then Askar said to Salaado, following a brief pause, “I don’t recall. Possibly you've told it and I’ve forgotten it. But how did you know that her body was at the mortuary?”

Salaado was overcome by a sense of despair, for there was a gap between what she knew to be true and what she suspected he would think she knew. In other words, she didn’t think he would believe her. “I was in a shop when …” but then she shrugged her shoulders, saying, “What’s the point, you won’t believe a word I say.”

He said, “Why not?”

Like someone turning in his tormented sleep, Salaado uttered an indistinct sound, one between noises made by some people who talk in their sleep and others who speak to their interlocutors in their dreams.

Askar asked, “Are you hiding something from me?”

“No.”

“Well. Tell it then.”

She said, “When I told him, Hilaal didn’t believe my story.”

Askar said, “Who am I? Hilaal?”

And Salaado pulled herself together at once. She appeared sufficiently apologetic and wished he hadn’t pushed her thus far. They both sought Hilaal’s comment — they understood he was determined to stay out of it. She then spoke, slowly, “I was in this so-called supermarket, when I overheard two women, both nurses working at the general hospital known as Digfar , talk about what one of them described as the corpse of a woman, black as dead shark’. At first, I took no interest, save the gentle curiosity which the description stirred in my otherwise indifferent mind, and I half-listened to what she was saying. But the more I heard the more certain I became it was Misra they were discussing. What decided it for me was the mention of a mastectomy operation, a recent one, in which one of the woman’s breasts had been removed. How I gained the few paces separating me from them, I cannot tell. What words I used to talk to the nurses, I cannot remember. I rushed straight to the hospital, found a doctor I knew and went, with him, to the mortuary. It was Misra — a corpse no one claimed. She had been reduced to that.”

He said, “And you claimed her body?”

“I had her removed from the section of ‘unclaimed corpses’ to one in which a daily fee is paid. There’s a difference between the rich and the poor, even when dead. The poor stink,” she said, disgusted at remembering the state of filth and stench the “Unclaimed Corpses Section” had been in. She went on, “I was sick. I couldn’t come home straight, I didn’t want to infect you with the sickness which had come upon me. I was telling the story of my disgust and despair, the story above all of Misra’s death, when the eclipse happened. I joined everyone else in prayer. I’m afraid I couldn’t remember the text of the Faatixa , let alone any other verse of the Koran. I put this down to my mental state — but I wouldn’t be able to remember any even now. Can you believe it? I, Salaado, prayed, together with everyone else. I was true to my name — Salaado, meaning prayer or devotions.”