Nuruddin Farah - Gifts

They rode in silence until they reached the hospital entrance, and she got off, happy that the journey was at an end. Her feet had grown numb, but the rest of her body felt light, as though she had just descended the gangway-ladder of an aircraft. Mataan raised the scooter on its stand and got down to give her her handbag, although his satchel remained slung over the handle-bars.

Barely able to hear her own voice she said, “I want you to change three hundred and fifty US dollars for me, Mataan dear,” and she gave him seven fifty-dollar bills, recalling to her memory all that had taken place the previous few days, including the discovery of the foundling, her meeting with and falling in love with Bosaaso, and the wads of money which she found tucked away in Nasiiba’s Iranian magazine. “We’ll need some cash when we go house-hunting this afternoon, in case a landlord insists on an immediate deposit. Don’t go to Uncle Qaasim if you can help it.”

“But I can’t think of anyone else,” he confessed.

“Ask around,” she suggested. “Good rate, safe person. I’m sure one of your friends will come up with a name. After all, this is good money, what Nasiiba calls ‘Bosaaso-money’ nowadays.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

She walked away, wishing him good day and advising him to take care.

Bosaaso came to fetch her after work, and after exchanging the formula greetings they remained quiet. The images pouring into Duniya’s mind refused to cohere. Maybe it was to do with a nervous bug in the pit of her stomach, a worried reaction to a hasty decision to serve the quit-notice on herself. There was no going back, she would have to move out, find some other place. But where?

Where did one start? The city of Mogadiscio expanded right before her eyes, growing a thousand times in size, although somehow she convinced herself that she should not be easily discouraged. It was a pity that newspapers did not carry notices advertising small flats to rent, only large villas intended for foreign residents of the metropolis, who were willing to pay their Somali landlords in hard currency. For locals, news about the availability of vacant accommodation, like other information, was circulated primarily by word of mouth in this essentially oral society.

Her pride and instinct for self-preservation advised against involving Bosaaso in her search. She did not have her own means of transport and taxis were impossible to find. Besides, he was willing to take her anywhere. Or was this exploitative?

It was when she thought of herself as a woman and thought about the female gender in the general context of “home” that Duniya felt depressed. The landmarks of her journey through life from infancy to adulthood were marked by various “stations,” all of them owned by men, run and dominated by men. Did she not move from her father’s home directly into Zubair’s? Did she not flee Zubair’s right into Shiriye’s? There was a parenthesis of time, a brief period when she was her own mistress and the runner of her station, so to speak, as a free tenant of Taariq’s, only for this to cease when they became husband and wife. Meanwhile, her elder brother Abshir’s omnipresent, benevolent, well-meaning shadow fell on every ramshackle structure she built, pursuing every move she made, informing every step she took: Abshir being another station, another man. Now there was Bosaaso. Morale delta storia? Duniya was homeless, like a great many women the world over. And as a woman she was property-less.

Over lunch, not speaking to anyone, not even Nasiiba (who had prepared today’s meal), nor Yarey (who had attempted to drag her into their conversation), Duniya recalled how often she had postponed looking for her own home, away from her half-brother Shiriye’s, where she and her twins had lived in virtual terror and humiliation. It was thanks to being misdirected by a neighbour (who might have been Marilyn’s grandmother for all she could tell) that she had knocked on the wrong door, Taariq’s. And he had taken pity on a homeless woman, with twins to raise. Would someone take pity on her today, being driven by a man in such a handsome car?

“Why, you look so miserable. Cheer up, Mummy!” Nasiiba said.

Her sadness long as her chin, Duniya replied, “Give me one reason why I should.”

The twins exchanged glances, resting ultimately on Bosaaso. This was lost on no one, save Yarey, who was busy dismantling a Parker pen belonging to Bosaaso, with nobody telling her not to ruin it.

As if setting the theme of a discussion, Duniya said, “The simple fact is that I am a homeless woman, and there is no getting away from it.”

Before long, the group began to talk at length of the notion of homelessness which, according to Bosaaso, had its origin in the myth of the displaced Adam, not Eve. This was challenged by Nasiiba, who argued that in Islam there was no such myth as the fall of man. There was the wandering figure of a migrant, in the Islamic notion of Hijra, which may also be interpreted as an act of a pious Muslim fleeing persecution. In an ideal Islamic society, the mosque is the place where the homeless go.

“Not homeless women, surely,” interjected Duniya.

Mataan affirmed, “That’s right.”

“In an ideal Islamic society…,” began Nasiiba.

“In which case there’d be fewer homeless women,” said Duniya, “perhaps because of the multiplicity of wives men are allowed to retain as their dependants or concubines.”

Sensing the tension building, Bosaaso changed the subject from the homeless in Islamic societies to the homeless in New York, men and women without shelter of their own, who slept under bridges, on flattened cardboard boxes serving as mattresses. Duniya remembered being shown such people in the environs of the Stazione Termini, the main railway station in Rome. Nearby there was a piazza called Independenza, the Somalis’ and the Eritreans’ meeting-place in the Italian capital. Duniya wondered why it was that foreigners and the homeless congregated round departure- or arrival-points in their country of economic exile. There was no denying that expatriates living in Mogadiscio were prone to go to the airport at the slimmest pretext to welcome or bid farewell their travelling compatriots. Somalis used to turn up in large numbers at Fiumicino, Rome’s international airport, whenever a Somali Airlines flight arrived or departed.

In response to a question from Mataan, Bosaaso said, “There are more homeless people in the city of New York than there are official residents of Mogadiscio, Somalia’s capital. The figure is shocking.”

“Truth is always embarrassing,” commented Nasiiba.

“In fact,” Bosaaso continued, “there’s recently been a controversy surrounding a United Nations film about the homeless in the world. You’d be surprised to know that some US Congressmen and Senators tried to prevent the public viewing of this documentary. And I take it, you’ve also heard about the Polish government’s gift of blankets to the homeless in New York?” and he glanced in Duniya’s direction.

Duniya admitted she hadn’t heard of it.

Tentatively, Nasiiba said, “Didn’t it all begin with President Reagan dispatching tinned milk to Poland, after the Chernobyl disaster, a gift meant to pack an ideological punch? Poland versus the Soviet Union. It turned out to be an unfortunate joke against Reagan, apparently, because the milk was found to be bad when opened. In response — tell me if I’m wrong, anyone,” continued Nasiiba, enjoying everyone’s attention, “the Polish government shipped blankets to New York’s homeless, but the parcels were addressed care of the White House. Ha, ha, ha!”

“And what did the Americans do?” Duniya inquired.

“Newspaper headlines,” said Bosaaso. “That was all.”