Nuruddin Farah - Gifts

When she jumped into the pool at the Centro Sportivo, it was late afternoon. Marilyn was her swimming-instructor, and Nasiiba was rather irritable, like a parent who had brought a child to an adults’ party. Duniya attributed this tension to the peculiar situation in which they found themselves: she was the only woman her age, all the others being Nasiiba’s peers. Some were training for an All-Africa swimming event scheduled to take place in West Africa, so Duniya was asked to keep to one end of the pool, to stay as far as possible out of the trainees’ way.

Marilyn showed immense tact. She told Duniya for the nth time, “It’s really very simple, if you follow my instructions. Please concentrate and do as I say.” But Duniya soon lost concentration, and her eyes followed Marilyn’s wandering gaze which unfailingly took in the breadth and width of the entrance to the pool. Marilyn and Nasiiba seemed to be watching out for a visitor. Who? “Let’s try again,” Marilyn suggested patiently.

Duniya couldn’t trust her ability to stay afloat. Her feet would drop into a deeper hole in the water, and the water swallowed, as if gulping several mouthfuls of Duniya, whose eyes were of no use, whose ears of no help, whose splashing noises were scandalously loud and clumsy, like a child’s.

Panic justifies flight, and one flees, thought Duniya. But her fear of drowning was heavier on the heart than anything she could imagine. And when least expected, her feet would fail to reach the ground. Whenever anyone laughed, she thought it was at her. She believed she was making a spectacle of herself, but began to relax only when they were at the shallower end of the pool, where she could support herself on her feet. “Please give me a moment to catch my breath,” she pleaded to Marilyn.

“Take your time,” said Marilyn.

Duniya blamed herself for not having talked everything through before hurling herself into the pool Before her first driving lesson she had gone over the basics with Bosaaso, unrushed, so she understood the theory before she started the engine. Here, it was different. She felt humiliated by the despicable remarks some of the young boys and girls were making; felt unprotected from the onslaught of unabashed youth, uncared for by Nasiiba, who had vanished God knows where. Marilyn was a friendly and sweet girl, but Duniya couldn’t depend on her totally; Marilyn was pretty, but with little depth and, in a certain sense, inarticulate when it came to explaining the theory of swimming, taking someone else through the first steps. Teaching Duniya was a secondary activity to both Marilyn and Nasiiba, it seemed to Duniya. For whom were they waiting, she wanted to know, why were their eyes focused on the entrance to the pool?

“ I am not waiting for anybody,” Marilyn replied.

“Then why are you and Nasiiba looking up anxiously at the entrance all the time?” asked Duniya, curious.

Marilyn’s shoulders shrugged as though of their own accord, “Ask Nasiiba.”

She was that kind of girl, Marilyn. For her, Nasiiba was the leader, there was nothing else to it. She did what Nasiiba bid her do. Duniya was sure Marilyn knew whom they were expecting. Some secrets are more important than those in whom they are confided. In the ears of her imagination, the older woman imagined her daughter telling Marilyn a secret and then instructing her not to divulge it, adding, “Just teach her to swim and be sweet to her.”

Earlier, in the changing-rooms, Nasiiba’s adept hands had helped Duniya squeeze into a swimming suit borrowed from Fariida. Duniya had felt like a bride being given the ritual bath and scented massage. Nasiiba had said, “You’ll lose weight. You’ll leave behind in the swimming-pool a minimum of two kilos today, I promise you.” Nasiiba and Marilyn had escorted her into the water, like bridemaids attending her at a wedding ceremony. As Duniya’s feet had touched the water, she had been frightened. Nasiiba had said, “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Mummy, nothing to worry about. Close your eyes and jump in, and by the time you open your eyes, you’ll be at the other end of the pool.”

Duniya watched young girls entering the pool with the ease with which she had walked into her marriages. Hadn’t she done just that: closed her eyes, and found herself married to Zubair, to Taariq?

And then her eyes fell on Fariida coming through the entrance. Fariida was walking with a waddle, her feet shuffling, like a senile person with a bad back All activity seemed to cease and a moment of silence fell on the whole place. Some of the girls congregated round Fariida, noisy like summer flies at a halva party. Fariida’s answer to the question “Where have you been lately?” was that she had gone mountain-climbing in the north and had fallen off a cliff, ending up with a slipped disc, forced to lie on her back since. Fariida’s friends left a pathway open for her, commiserating with her as she walked past them on her heavy feet. They had known her as an able athlete who twice had stripped the title-holder of the swimmer’s crown. (Duniya would learn later from Nasiiba that when Fariida went to East Africa with Qaasim, the story was that she had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.)

It didn’t take long for the hubbub to die down. Some of the girls gathered in groups in order to exchange the latest gossip. Some said that Fariida had been pregnant and had aborted the baby; some insisted the tale was as tall as the mountain the young woman was credited to have climbed.

Then Nasiiba re-appeared and brought Fariida to meet her mother, who chose to stay in the water, at the edge of the pool. It was disconcerting to pretend that she had seen her recently. So they chatted, feeling awkward. For the first few minutes of their conversation, Duniya avoided looking Fariida in the face. Displaying signs of discomfort, the younger woman crouched by the pool, and Duniya dared not leave the water for fear that she would develop cold feet and abandon the idea of learning to swim. In the meantime, her costume tightened round her body like a boa constrictor.

It was then that Nasiiba, adept at organizing other people’s lives, suggested, “Why don’t you join us later? Fariida and I will lie by the pool. You do what you’ve got to do, and we’ll do what we must.” To Marilyn, Nasiiba said, “Please go on teaching Mummy to swim.” Watching Fariida shuffle away, Duniya thought that she had lost weight, but not her long-limbed charm. She had lovely eyes, was taller than Miski and a great deal handsomer. She was several months older than the twins. Fariida had on a baggy frock, perhaps one she had worn when pregnant with the foundling.

Duniya now saw the water she stood in as that of afterbirth and innocence. She recalled Nasiiba purporting that Duniya did not know her children well, or what they were up to. Meeting Fariida was an eye-opener for her, an encounter worth remembering.

Now that Fariida and Nasiiba had receded into the darkening backdrop, Marilyn’s anxious voice was saying, “If you’ll relax and follow my instructions, Duniya …”

“I sink like an anchor whenever I lift my feet off the floor of the pool,” Duniya said.

“Don’t think about it.” Marilyn was getting into her stride, as if she had gained courage from the contact with Fariida and Nasiiba. “That’s the first thing about swimming. Let your body take care of itself, let it float when it will, let it drop anchor if it wants to.”

Duniya nodded her head, like a child who has been convinced that a measles injection will not hurt. It might have been the younger woman’s tone of voice that finally did the trick, but Duniya felt hypnotized. Smiling sweetly and not thinking, she put her full trust in Marilyn.

“Now!” said Marilyn, meaning start. She placed her open palm, wide as a pitta bread, under Duniya’s body, lifting it up, like an acrobatic skater on a rink vibrant with enthusiastic applause. “That’s superb,” she encouraged. “Good, very good!”