Maps (11 page)

And if he joined the university? It worried him that, at a university, he was likely to indulge his thoughts in higher intellectual pursuits and that he might not think it worth his while to fight until death in order to liberate the semi-arid desert that was the Ogaden. He was sure, in the camaraderie characteristic of the times in which he lived, that there would be a great many people who would dissuade him from dying for a nationalistic cause, such as the Ogaden people's. Many Somalis, he knew, were inarticulate with rage whenever the argument they put forward was challenged. Wouldn't a university education equip him with better and more convincing reasons, wouldn't it provide him with the economic, political and cultural rationalizations, wouldn't he be in a better position to argue more sophisticatedly? He would, perhaps, write a book on the history of the Ogaden and document his findings with background materials got from the oral traditions of the inhabitants. So would he take the gun? Or would he resort to, and invest his powers in, the pen?

Once in Mogadiscio, Misra was not likely to return to the scene of her treason. Her past, now that it was dishonoured, as was her name, would come before her, naked like a child. But instead of touching and fondling her newly found child, Misra would shun contact with it. She would double up with guilt, he hoped, and would suffer from the cramps of disgrace. The marrow in the cavities of her bones, he hoped, would congeal, due to the chill of exposure. Cursed she would remain, he prayed, and unforgivable too. May the tendons of her neck snap, he prayed to God, as should every traitor's neck and may her blood, startled, rush to her eyes and blind her. May her mucus dry and may the pain this caused, in the end, bring about her death. May the earth reject her, may the heavens refuse to grant her an audience. If and only if she had betrayed!

It pained him to remember that he had once shared his life with her, it made him feel embarrassed to recall that he had been so close to her once, that he had been proud of her. Once she upheld him, like water—she lifted him up and threw him, as though she were a wave followed by another and another and another. He tasted the salt in her tears, he smelt of her menstruation. He called her “Mother” years ago. Could he undo all the ties which held them together? Could he, like time, sever all their links? Oh, how he wished he could hang “time” on a peg like a wet cloth, and how he wished it wouldn't stop raining so the cloth would not dry; yes, how he wished he could suspend “time” so he would not grow up to be a man—a man on his own, and to whom Misra would say, “You are on your own!” No. As a child, he never wanted to be on his own, never wanted to be alone, for he couldn't find himself inside of himself, only in others, preferably adults like Misra and Aw-Adan, who would analyse situations and tell him things he might never have known about himself if not informed by their experience. Misra's “Your are on your own!” reeked of the same vindictive-ness as a man's throwing out of the house a pet he kept and fed for years, a pet expected to fend for itself. One morning, when he had wet the bed the previous night, she spoke the formula shibboleth “You are on your own” (this was he when he was a little under five-and-a-half years old) and made as if to go out.

“Wait, wait, Misra,” he said.

The voice sounded grown-up to her and she did as told. Also, she saw that he had wrapped her
shamma-
shawl
round his shoulders, looking very much like a woman; and he started saying: “When I grow up and I become a man…”, purporting, as it were, to speak for a long time, although he suddenly stopped, since he suspected she might not have noticed what he had wrapped round his shoulders.

Her voice, teasing and friendly, “And I an old woman…, yes, when I grow older and I have no teeth left and no help forthcoming and you a grown-up man and I a helpless old woman … ! One day, when you are a youth… and I an old emaciated woman, friendless …,” and she was standing a few inches away from him …

Firmly, “No,” he said, indicating that she had messed up his plans. “No,” he repeated, shaking his head as if saying, “This is not what I meant.”

“What no? Why not?”

He was silent. She thought that perhaps she had upset him greatly and so she extended her hand out to him and he took it in silence. They hugged slightly, neither speaking. Then his hands, when he tried to clasp them round her, wouldn't make a circle, the fingers wouldn't touch, they wouldn't reach one another, and he was now saying, half-playful and half-serious, “No, no, no.” She looked at him and saw that the
shamma-
shawl had slipped away to the ground, trapping his feet, and the face that emerged was that of a half-man, half-child.

“What no? Why no? What are you telling me, my man?”

Again his voice sounding grown-up, “When I grow up and I am a man…I am trying to tell you if you care to hear it…Misra dearest…,” and he took a distance and stood out of her arms' reach.

“Yes?”

“I will kill you.”

She stared at him in silence for a long time. “But why?”

“To live, I will have to kill you.”

“Just like you say you killed your mother?”

“Just like I killed my mother—to live.”

V

He asked himself the question whether, to live, he would have to kill her if he saw her in Mogadiscio—now that there were good reasons for him to do so.

I

Y
ou began debating with the egos of which you were compounded, and, detaching itself from the other selves, there stood before you, substantial as a shadow, the self (in you) which did not at all approve of your talking with or touching Misra, lest you were lost in the intensity of her embrace. For a long time, your selves argued with one another, each offering counter arguments to the suggestions already submitted by the others. Undecided, and undeciding, you stood in front of a mirror and you studied those aspects of yourself which could be seen with the naked eye and you concluded that Misra wouldn't recognize you, even if she saw you in the street that day You wore your age on your face, for instance. And your hand felt a day's growth on your chin as you wondered if you should shave. An instant later, you were on the mat of your younger stubble, watching Aw-Adan help Misra study her future in the flames of a fire she had made. Oh, if only… !

If only you and Misra could meet in a room darkened for that very purpose, you told yourself. If only there were no mirror to divulge the secrets of your inner torments; if the two of you could touch each other in the dark; if you could get used to each other while still in the unlit room; if each could claim to be someone else, until you were together long enough to want to know the other; if each could fabricate a story which would go well with the identity you wished to assume (you hadn't, by then, been told that she had entered the country in disguise!); if only you could speak to each other without recognizing each other, remembering hardly anything which might generate suspicions, anything which might activate emotions within, anything which might stir dormant memories of your life together.

And if the two of you met in broad daylight, in the presence of other people, when, say Hilaal was here, or one of your friends, one of your acquaintances or one of your neighbours? You were certain your confidence would be so shattered you would break into pieces; at best, your dignity would drop at your feet as though it were a shawl flung by its wearer; possibly your tongue, short as the midday shadow, would curl up and lie exhausted in the sweaty siesta of the moment's lethargy and you wouldn't be able to speak

What you needed to confront her with was an innocence with which to protect yourself, you thought. Alternatively, you could do with the kind of powered stare you were bom with—that unmitigatable, impenetrable, “whole” stare, one which might have caught sight of her guilt and focused on it. Could this be why you felt comfortable standing in the curtained silence of the darkened hour, standing, to be precise, in the confluences of your past and your present; standing your ground, withstanding the wholesome flood of your future! “You behave as though you were a husband to whom a woman has been unfaithful,” commented Uncle Hilaal, “as though you couldn't bring yourself to touch the body which had betrayed your trust. It is unbelievable that you would avoid any physical contact with the woman who could justifiably say that ‘by touching me, it seems as though he were touching himself!'” You lifted your eyebrows as if in wonder, and no wonder! For there stood before you, upright and as though waiting,
another
you, younger surely and more confident. You couldn't think of anything to say—you didn't speak to your younger self. Instead, you moved away from the mirror and stared ahead of yourself.

The world was open as the field you could see from the window and…

II

You were very old and your skin had started to sag and so you had it altered—that is, you exchanged your old body for another, one which belonged to a young woman. How this had taken place, or why, was something beyond your conjecture. Why, for instance, first wear the mask and features of an old man, only to discard them the following moment in order to don the visage and look of a young woman? Or why, for that matter, resort to a metamorphosis, changing face, visage, age, sex and features too?

Anyway, the signs of your body's sagging began to appear first in the hands and fingers which shrank to the size of a small child's little fingers. The logic behind all this metamorphosis was so dim to your unilluminated perception of things that you couldn't see anything clearly Your legs had stiffened so you couldn't get up, walk or rise to your feet—the legs themselves having been reduced to the size of a monkey's paw. And you were seventy years old.

A second later, you were watching a young woman's body being dismantled, right in front of you—each limb, part and organ was first shown to you so you could examine its fitness. Every now and then, you offered your approval or disapproval by nodding or shaking your head. You wondered why the young woman accepted the exchange. You were told that she was disgusted by her young body—a body which was beautiful, smooth and seductive. You were told that her father had raped her, that her elder brother had desired her and that her mother and sisters were envious of her. You were told that she couldn't walk up or down a street without someone proposing to her, without feeling eyes of lust piercing through her body to the core of her soul. You were told that she felt she was a dartboard and an intrusion of eyes were penetrating through her. And why was she interested in yours? “Yours is a maturer kind of anima,” she said, standing in front of you, half old and half young, half you and the other half herself. Parts of your body mingled well with hers.

You noticed that her head, hairless and smooth like a peeled onion, lay within your reach. You wished you could stretch out your hand and touch her but apparently your arms hadn't been screwed on. Also, you didn't like the ugly sights in front of you now that you could see better, nor did you like eating the food that was on offer, now that your appetite was that of a young person. So why did you accept the exchange? someone asked you. “You must know,” you said. “Only in dreams do such impossible things happen.” And you were silent, thoughtful—and concentrating.