Knots (18 page)

Up where she is, in the bathroom on the fourth floor, the sea breeze blows gently into her face and reactivates her memory, stimulating pleasant past associations in which she pays a return visit to her young days in Mogadiscio, when Somalis were at peace with their identities, happy with the shape of their world as it was then. The problem now is how to navigate the perilous paths, with mindless militiamen making everywhere unsafe; occupying other people's homes; vandalizing or removing and reusing the doors, garage gates, the motors and roofs of most of these properties.

She has never imagined she will see the day when she will appreciate the very thing she has always taken for granted—a clean washroom, the toilet system functioning, the bathroom floor immaculate, towels on the rails. She is comforted at the thought of being in an impeccable one for the first time since her arrival, and she is flushed with joy. It goes to show that only a corrupt society tolerates living in such filth, especially the men who put up with the muck they have made, as if dirt makes itself, reproduces itself. No woman with the means to do something about it will endure so much grunge. Her mother has always said that you are as clean as you make yourself.

In the restaurant, Cambara sits at her table with an exaggerated élan, eagerly waiting for her meal and a word from or about Kiin. A different waiter from the one who earlier showed her to the table helps take her body tent from her and places it on a clothes hanger. He introduces himself as the headwaiter and is in a white long-sleeved shirt, freshly ironed; well-tailored khaki trousers; and black lace-up shoes, recently polished to perfection. He brings her news from the deputy manager: Kiin is on her way and should get here shortly.

“Oh, but that's wonderful,” she says, beaming.

“And the meal is on the house.”

“Thank you.”

She smiles with the effortless serenity of a woman who has just won the lottery. As he walks away, maybe to bring the starter, she remembers the awfulness of cooking in Zaak's kitchen, using what came to hand. She believes that she will never forget beheading their chickens with the dullest knife she has ever seen, tugging at the insides, gutting them, wiping off the blood of the birds she slaughtered for the armed youths, and cooking the chickens for their lunch.

The waiter returns bearing ice water, then a few seconds later a starter—a salad of tomato and mozzarella—and before leaving to get her second course, brings the olive oil bottle, the salt, and pepper closer to her. He is back soon enough, this time with her fish dish, browned to perfection and garnished with parsley and a slice of lemon.

Cambara tucks into her meal with an uncharacteristic joyous abandon, relishing every morsel. Just as she is debating whether to consider taking a room in the hotel for the sake of its kitchen and cleanness, her wandering gaze fastens upon a woman approaching with some urgency, her stride graceful. Cambara's heartbeat quickens, beating in anticipation of making Kiin's acquaintance, which she hopes will open many a door closed to her until now. To Cambara, the well-turned-out woman is walking with the dignity of one accustomed to carrying the world on her head and proud of doing so too. Eager as a preteen girl, Cambara prays that she and Kiin will share the sort of friendship only women are capable of forging. The Lord knows how badly a woman needs the friendship of other women in a civil war city repugnant with the trigger-happy degeneracy of its militiamen.

“I am Kiin,” the woman in all-black chador and white bandanna says, “come to welcome you to Mogadiscio.” Silence, then an exquisite smile attends Kiin's face, her eyes becoming wider with the brilliance of a gorgeous grin.

Wishing she were bold enough to hug Kiin in advance recognition of their becoming soul mates, Cambara pushes her chair back and has just about contented herself with the mere shaking of her hands, when Kiin looks into her eyes, then embraces her chest to chest. Then Kiin plants a peck of a kiss on one cheek, then the other. An unbidden thought—that Kiin is a woman with formidable initiative, of strong character and profound conviction—coincides with a discordant idea as an eerie otherworldly feeling descends upon Cambara, in which she imagines herself as a discarded rag doll saved from the fire just in time and given a bit of dusting. Why have these colliding ideas—the one about a forsaken doll that has been abandoned by the child who has loved it and expects nothing short of continuous affection, the other about the redoubtable Kiin—come to her at the same time? Kiin's Emirate type of veil is of flimsy material, comforting to touch, with her breasts bulging downward in flattened acknowledgment of an early motherhood.

“Welcome,” Kiin is saying. “Sit and eat.”

Cambara's instant adoration of Kiin has the quality of an intense infatuation, the conditions for which are propitiously ripe. Prone to making sudden decisions, she decides to take a room in Kiin's hotel, certain that it will be to her liking and that using it as her local base and living in it will help their closeness, which will gain more strength with the passage of time. A relationship with like-minded people whose community of
jinn,
as Somalis say, are often in agreement with one another, can only achieve a great deal.

Kiin asks, “When did you come into the city? Why didn't you come to the hotel, to look for me? Raxma, my friend and cousin, has been ringing from Toronto twice a day, admonishing me for not having located you and given you a room in the hotel. She asks every time she phones if I've rung all the hotels, inquiring if you are putting up with them. I am glad that all our efforts have borne fruit and that I've found you safe and in good shape. I don't want to be indiscreet, and please no misunderstanding. Are you comfortable wherever you are? Most important, do you feel safe to go about your business, whatever it is? What sort of amenities does your place have? Does it have running water? Does it have electricity for much of the day, especially in the middle of the day when you need air-conditioning during siesta and at night for your safety and security?”

Cambara looks anew at Kiin, whom she finds to be very pleasant on the eye, a gorgeous woman imbued with practical understanding. In one instant, she is dizzy with delight, a child living in a world of light who has a command view of a much larger space than she has ever imagined possible. In the next instant, she is an adult with the memory of a child who has dwelled in a well-lit territory out of which a rogue of a man has expelled her. Her heart beating faster and faster, her anxiety rising in a déjà vu way, Cambara says, “I've been living in very primitive conditions, I'll be honest with you.”

“Move into my hotel. We'll go get your things right away,” Kiin suggests. “At Maanta, there is running water, the toilets are clean, the kitchen functions twenty-four hours a day, and we have power all day and all night. It is very secure too. We'll provide you with rides to and from any part of the city you require to get to; we'll do your shopping and your laundry; and we'll get you connected: e-mail, mobile, you name it.”

“What I won't do for a clean room and a toilet!”

Kiin, moved, takes Cambara by the arm. She stares emotionally into her new friend's eyes and then says, “On your say-so and if you tell us where they are, I can send my driver and the staff in my car to get your stuff.”

Cambara turns this over in her mind, in silence. Not too fast, she thinks, remembering how she rushed into loving and then marrying Wardi. Now look where she has ended up: in Mogadiscio, childless, bitter, risking her life in order to get the better of her loss.

Kiin reads her own meaning into Cambara's silence, and she asks if there is a problem.

“A problem?”

“If you'll permit an indiscretion,” says Kiin.

“Please feel free.”

“Is there a man hereabouts that you've come to see and from whom you do not wish to be separated? Put another way, do you have a man problem?” Kiin asks and, having done so, takes on a disarranged appearance, like a room that has been tossed and then left in haste.

“That is a very interesting way of putting it: a ‘man problem.'” Cambara looks amused, nods her head, and repeats the phrase a couple of times, grinning.

Kiin says, “Tell me what you got yourself into and we can solve any man problem or any other difficulty, whatever its nature. I owe it to Raxma; I owe it to you as a woman. We deal easily with men problems in civil war Mogadiscio.”

Talk of holding the wrong end of a stick, which, considering Kiin's take on it, makes sense. Understandably, Kiin has misconstrued Cambara's story as told to her by Raxma and has played up the man problem, assuming Wardi to be the culprit. Unaware of the makeup of Cambara's hesitation to take up the offer of a clean room and toilet with immediate effect, Kiin has apparently shifted the scene, mistaking Toronto, where Cambara's man problem occurred, for Mogadiscio, where there is nothing of the kind.

“Tell you what?” Kiin soldiers on, determined to help. “Give me your list of needs, and I'll go shopping around and provide them the best I can.”

Cambara is herself surprised the moment the words leave her lips, because she has not given serious thought to a shopping list in as clear a manner as she is now presenting it to Kiin. It is as if she is the medium for an elsewhere woman into whom she has lapsed for the present.

“I have jobs that require the services of an electrician, a carpenter, and a plumber,” Cambara says. “I would like you to help me find these skilled workers and for them to start on the jobs I have in mind. There is no question about it. I will move into Maanta sooner than you think.”

“Does that mean you've bought a property?”

“It does not mean that.”

“Does it mean that you've recovered your family property, which ragged,
qaat
-chewing squatters have vandalized, reducing it to an inhabitable state? Are you living there now and want to move into Maanta while it is being renovated?” Kiin wonders.

“No, it does not mean that.”

“What does it mean then? Why do you need a carpenter, a plumber, and an electrician?”

“It's all very complicated,” replies Cambara.

“Will you kindly unpack the character of your difficulties, explaining what they are, so I am in a position to help?”

“Give me a day or two and I will,” says Cambara.

Kiin behaves in a strange way. Her eyes, misting over, look away, to discourage Cambara from reading a meaning into her actions. Does Kiin feel that she is cold-shouldering her? It seems as if her enthusiasm is collapsing like a balloon pricked with a sharp object and exploding, crumpling into lifelessness.

Kiin is the first to break the awkward silence and looks for a waiter, maybe to settle the bill and then go. It is obvious from the way she shifts in her seat that she is ending the conversation. She says to Cambara, “Do you have your own transport, or would you like me to organize a lift back to where you are staying?”

Cambara susses out that her silence has rubbed Kiin the suspicious way and tells herself that nothing she does or says will soften the hardness that has entered Kiin's voice or look. She realizes that she is to blame, not Kiin. It is too late, maybe, to revisit the topic. Anyhow, she needs the unrushed time to do the right thing, to get to know Kiin better. No more scrambling; she needs time and will insist on taking it.

“I would appreciate a lift, thank you.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At my cousin's place.”

“Where is his house?”

“Near the former cigarette factory.”

Kiin catches the eye of the waiter, whom she sends out to call her driver up. The chauffeur, a very slim, handsome man in his early twenties, joins them and stands at an angle, half facing away, as he listens to Kiin, who tells him to take the staff of three—in Mogadiscio lingo, armed guards—and give a ride to Cambara, who is putting up in a house near the former cigarette factory.

“Am I to come back and pick you up from here?”

“No need,” Kiin says. “This is my city.”

Cambara asks politely, “Are you sure?”

“I'll borrow a car from this hotel.”

As they part, Kiin hugging Cambara, and Cambara saying how much of a pleasure it has been to meet, she gives Cambara a piece of paper from an exercise book on which she has written all her coordinates. “You'll hear from me before the end of tomorrow,” promises Kiin.

“I'll aim to see you soon,” Cambara assures her.

Cambara, no longer wearing impediments of any form, comes down light-footed and fresh after a cold shower. She is carrying bagfuls of purchases from the shopping complex, which she puts down on the floor when she comes upon the ugliness that is Zaak. Bare-chested, he is standing wobbly in a sarong shakily tied round his waist, his forehead glowing with sweat. He is pacing the breadth and width of the living room. He stops moving when she is within a meter of him. He sniffs out a trace of the cologne she is wearing and for some reason is furious, like a jealous husband locating alien scents his partner has just brought in from the outside.

After a measured pause and with a mischievous grin embellishing his features, Zaak asks, “Have you been out and, if so, where?”

Nonplussed, she surrenders herself to the unbecoming mixed emotions knocking at the door of her brain. For, among other things, she wonders if it is worth her while to remind him that he has no right to put to her such a question in that tone of voice, which she finds intrusive, insensitive, offensive, and that she hopes that he withdraws it, since he can not expect her to answer it. She feels justified in ignoring him and remains unspeaking for a long time, making certain that she keeps her temper in check. What's his concern with where she goes? How dare he assume that he can ask her questions like that?

“Yes, I've been out,” she says.

“Where have you been?”

Zaak's tone of voice belongs to a couple of unpleasant memories that she has often associated with the years following their separation as a couple when he showed his ugly colors.

“Here and there,” she says.

His face, swollen from sleep deprivation, wears a porcine expression, and his throat issues something of a growl. He says, “Here and where?”

“Nowhere specific.”

“And what did you do?”

“Nothing in particular.”

Then he sounds unexpectedly friendlier than he feels, she thinks, as he asks, “You've been having the feel of the city, from which you've been away for a very long time, have you?”

“That's one way of putting it.”

“Precisely where is here and where is there?”

Cambara looks into space, dejectedly pondering. After a few seconds, her thoughts take shape in bits and pieces, this resulting in enough angry words to crowd her windpipe, badgering her to speak them. She makes a considered attempt to put flesh on her ideas without giving in to her rage. To her surprise, because the jumbles of uncoordinated phrases catch at her throat, annoying her, she curses quietly in frustration. Several attempts later, she issues a sound that is neither a cringe nor a snicker but more like a naughty girl's attempt at fighting back a fit of giggles and failing. She continues swearing under her breath and still manages to control her anger, convinced that whatever she says now will seem inappropriate, even if she puts all she has into her rebuff in response to his mildly hostile rebuke, a reprimand cast in the guise of a question.

Perhaps it is time to change the subject, especially since she does not want to be bullied into lying, like a guilty spouse speaking small untruths to cover up the glaring huge gaps in his or her story. Nor does she feel rueful about doing what she has done; rather, she is terribly pleased with her achievements today, chuffed. Moreover, she wants to keep her affairs close to her chest. What's the point of sharing her joys with Zaak? She sees no benefit in his camaraderie and of course does not wish to be easily duped into believing that he will be of assistance to her, which he hasn't been to date. Now she remembers how her mother once compared her daughter's reticence, when the mood demands, to a house capable of holding on to its secrets admirably. Cambara will move their conversation on in as natural a pace as a horse needing no encouragement from its rider to trot faster.

She picks up her purchases. She is in the mood to cook, to feed everyone who happens to be around. She thinks that it will do her spirits wonders. She asks, “What about supper?”

“Myself, I've eaten enough for the day.”

That he is a spoiler is not lost on her. However, she tries to work out how best to reap a benefit from having gone out of her way to buy the utensils and food items for Zaak's house. Until now, she has been of the view that her purchases will prove useful in the long run, will probably give her an advantage in influencing the thinking of the youths in an unequivocal way, the better to cultivate their amity. She senses that she can farm the untilled terrain of their brains only if she irrigates them with kindnesses. What is she to do, chastise him in round terms, or go directly to the youths through their stomachs, feeding them in hope of winning them over to her side?

“What about the youths and the driver?” she says. “If I cook, maybe they will want to eat? What do you think?”

He takes several short steps, removes himself ponderously from her, as if she has requested that he give her a wide berth. He goes over to his favorite chewing corner and rearranges his stuff, smoothing the rug here and there, lifting the cushion and pushing the rug along with the pillow against the wall, all the while humming a tune that she cannot make out.

He says, “What's with you and the armed youths?”

“How do you mean?”

“What are they to you, why are you bothering about them?”

Her face registers a passing fidget, and she thinks that it will be a shame if she capitulates to Zaak's insinuations just because he has proven resistant to making the necessary attitudinal changes toward the youths. It will not surprise her in the least if he tries to thwart her moves or opposes whatever it is she proposes, envious of the fact that she is creating a new history in which she and the youths relate to each other in an altered way, and he is being pushed out into the untamed wilderness, isolated in his own home. She is no doubt aware that her empathy with the youths will, at best, be fraught with all kinds of complications, especially if, exercising her powers of peaceful persuasion, she attempts to mold a working relationship with one or two of them. For what it is worth, she has made up her mind that nothing he does and no temper tantrums from any of the youths will make her refrain from pursuing her central idea: a truce of a sort with them as she strives to do all she can to recover the family property. It is well known that great opportunities are missed for lack of mastering the small mechanisms of a device, compelling one to abandon the use of it.

“I'll be more than pleased to cook for everybody,” she volunteers.

“I don't give a toss about the youths and their food,” he says tetchily. Readying to sit, he bends double, raising his bum, with his paunch tumescent, his hands supporting him, and he gropes for a comfortable way of first taking a crouch and then seating himself down. All the while perspiring, he is breathing heavily and with difficulty.

No point in telling him that she is self-serving when she feeds the youths. Not when it comes to attending to SilkHair, though; he is special. In any case, she doubts Zaak will understand.

Seated, his breathing even, he gloats, “I've already supplied them with their daily ration of fresh
qaat,
which they are now busy chewing; I doubt that cooked food will interest them. As for me, I am ready for a long, relaxed chew, and you are most welcome to join me.”

The tone of her voice, being blatantly friendly, disaffirms the intent of what she says, half smiling. “Thank you, but no.”

“Incidentally, what will you cook, since there is no food to speak of in the house and I did not bring in any?” he asks.

“I've bought some.”

“You have?”

“In addition to the food,” she says, surprising him, “I've also bought a couple of utensils for cooking and other items that will come in handy whenever I am in the kitchen.”

Dusk, prematurely descending, enters Zaak's eyes, wherein it takes residence, the darkness of the moment making it difficult for Cambara to read his uncertain expression. She cannot tell if he is happy that she has gone on an errand and bought these items or if he is annoyed. Of one thing she is sure: that knowing no better and having not been truly informed of her movements and the contacts that she has made, he is not so much worried as offended. He confirms her suspicions when he speaks.

He says, “Tell me, have you, in your madness, launched yourself into one or the other of the city's dangerous territories in your insane attempt to visit the family property?”

“Dangerous or not, insane or not, as you can see I am still here and unhurt,” she says. “Thanks for your help. I'll remember that.”

He lifts his chin in anger. “What're you saying?

“Nothing new for now.”

“Are you threatening me in some way?”

Indignant, he rises, loses his bearing, at first not knowing where he is going or what he means to do; he moves around as if in search of an unrecoverable item. He is in a feral pique, angrier at himself than he is at Cambara. He stares at her fiercely, then looks away and has no idea what to do. Eventually, he calms his nerves, preparatory to making himself as comfortable as he can to have a good, sumptuous chew, his bundles of
qaat
spread about him. Because he drags his right leg behind him as he readies to sit, she is unsure if his foot has gone to sleep or if it has become incapacitated, in view of the fact that he never walks or exercises. He is so out of shape and so unhealthy, every physical activity or gesture pointing to his decrepitude, the infirmity, if you will, of his lowly ambition.

Cussing, he goes on all fours, kneels down, half crawls awkwardly, and supporting his clumsiness with both his hands, which shake, almost collapsing, he exerts a great deal of effort into making the hundred-eighty-degree turn before collapsing. The strain causes him to sweat. He is puffy, his shortness of breath worries him, he wheezes. Eventually, Zaak assumes a convenient squat position. Then he exhales, relieved.

When he has paused long enough and has regained his equanimity, he asks, “How did you go about getting there?”

“I walked.”

“You walked everywhere?”

“I got a taxi on the way back.”

“Where? Be specific.”

She reflects upon the question and the command to be precise, sensing the presence of an invisible snare, like a speed trap, into which one goes unawares. There is no way of knowing if the driver or the youths have seen her in the taxi that took her from the shopping complex or from the hotel to the house. And since he has neither the charisma nor the guile to draw any information out of her, it is appropriate that she avoid the ambush.

She waffles. “You know I can walk for miles and miles if I put my mind to it? Remember how I used to jog ten miles every now and then without a break or a moment's rest?”

“No problems?”

“None whatsoever.”

Zaak picks up a bundle of
qaat
, selects a couple of young shoots, snaps their tender ends off with the impulse of an executioner decapitating a criminal, and then stuffs them into his mouth. When his eyes tighten, Cambara assumes they do so at her inauspicious conduct—a madwoman courting danger by going it alone, walking, when he has offered her a lift in a truck, with a driver and an armed escort. That's what he will say, even if it is untrue.

“You are not okay in the head,” he says.

“Maybe you're right.”

“You're most peculiar in the way you behave.”

She doesn't rise to his untoward comments but looks at her watch and studies its time-telling face, as a semi-literate might attempt to strain elusive sense from the sequence of the letters in front of her. She interprets his “You're not okay in the head” as meaning “You're not behaving like a woman.” She remembers instances from her past in which men used similar words to put her down.

“You do find it all incredibly exciting, don't you? Courting danger,” he sallies, his voice almost breaking, his gaze uncertain. Knowing him, Cambara imagines him to be more irritated with himself for appearing so helpless than with her for exhausting his graciousness and testing his patience.

“I won't deny that,” Cambara responds.

“Wooing danger has some appeal?”

“To some people, it does.”

“Does it to you?”

“I haven't thought of it that way.”

Perhaps he sees her doings as the workings of a sex-starved woman mourning not the death of her only son but the loss of her husband. Is this why he retreats into the surrounds of his indulgent indecisiveness, one instant describing her as insane and wanting not to have anything to do with her rash behavior, the second displaying worry and warning her about going further? As for her, she turns a thought over and over in her head, and she analyzes it from every possible angle. Is it a tall order for her to want to leave every place better than she has found it? Is this why she has bought the food with the same ease with which she requested Kiin to get a plumber and an electrician? Maybe she needs to prepare Zaak for the changes that she plans to introduce. He is not likely to accept the changes without a struggle. After all, a pig is more comfortable wallowing in its squalor than lying on a bed with a mattress, bedspreads, and freshly laundered sheets.