Maps (33 page)

Now, for example. An unremoved bullet might cause a man's death. But you need more than undealt-with tetanus and the rigidification of the muscles of the jaws for death to happen. Doctors, like the societies to which they belong, diagnose their patients, drawing conclusions based on their (I grant you here “learned”) prejudices. What I am trying to say, inarticulately, all this time, is you need more than scientific evidence for you to disown the woman who, for the first few years of your life, you called “Mother”. Think, Askar.

Now he could hear the voice, now he couldn't And his breathing was slow and shallow and he lay tucked in bed, thinking and thinking and thinking, remembering, unremembering and remembering. The result of his silent reflections, his quiet meditations, his discursive consultations with Hilaal and Salaado, the result: he decided that Misra's wraith in Askar had died a spiritual death. What good would it do if he asked her point-blank, did you betray? Are you a traitor? And, pray, what is your true name?

And the voice was in his ears, repeating to him Salaado and Hilaal's coalition of views. And someone was saying that Misra had been seen in Mogadiscio, that she was already here, looking for him—looking for Askar, “my Askar, my son”.

“What will you do if you meet her?” someone asked.

Askar's answer, “I don't know.”

The sun's light in the room was breaking into tiny particles the size of atoms and while he thought of what he would do if he were to meet her again, Askar studied the phenomenon in thoughtful silence. The sun's rays of atoms, his own shattered, fragmented selves.

“Misra, why did you have to do this to me? Why? Why?”

And he heard the voices of dawn and he felt cold, he felt hot, and curled into a foetal position, seeing himself young again, in Kallafo again. Then, suddenly, all this vanished and he was in Mogadiscio, in bed and Salaado was calling his name.

III

Misra grew smaller as she aged, he realized; he, bigger as he grew up. He told himself that her voice had thinned, the brightness in her eyes had faded a little too. And yet he couldn't stop wondering if her
other half
 was hiding inside her and would somehow re-emerge and take over eventually, the way voices of one person speak in another's body, when under the powers of an exorcist. She was an actress without her props; she was a clown without paint. He saw her start—it was sudden as a hiccup, fast. He didn't know why He moved about, measured of step, economical of gestures—he took his distance from her. It was enough that they had embraced, that was as far as he was willing to go. He had felt something run through his body as they hugged. That Uncle Hilaal and Salaado were there didn't help matters either. If anything, their presence made things worse for him. He might have been franker with her if they were alone, in a room, in Mogadiscio, after God knows how many years of not meeting or being together; he might have told her openly why their physical contact gave him a sense of repugnance. And once they hugged, did he say anything? Or did she? What did he say? Did he welcome her? He looked from Salaado to Uncle Hilaal and then to Misra, and she was ugly as guilt, small and distant. He decided he would ask Salaado what things were said between them as they touched—maybe there was something he could learn about himself in this manner.

“How long have you been here?” he said to Misra.

She rearranged her tatters which were dust free, although she had come a long way, although the roads between Mogadiscio and Kallafo breathed the dust of travel all the way. He looked around for signs which, he hoped, would indicate if she had brought her baggage with her. Wouldn't her belongings be here, in the living-room, if she had brought them?

Her voice was thinner than he remembered. “Where? Here?”

He stole a quiet glance in the direction of Uncle Hilaal. Askar told himself that he had been sadly mistaken in thinking that Uncle could have reminded him of Misra in the first place. In the second, there was a world's difference between their voices—one was rich and comforting, the other thin as though dressed in the cheapest of rags.

“Yes,” he said at last.

He waited to see if her “missing half would make itself useful somehow. Why, she was reduced to half her original size and he was certain there was something uncanny about it all. For a second or so, he couldn't trust his own memory, wondering if the woman in his uncle and Salaado's living-room was an imposter. He couldn't have known what she thought about him and the cold welcome offered her, but her pride in him was in her eyes and no matter how she tried, she couldn't help displaying it to all and sundry.

There was a long pause.

And he remembered a dream in which
he
was inside a woman who remained nameless in the dream and he was trying his best to give birth to himself. Ejected, he was in a pool of blood and he swam in it, washed in it and the blood blinded him; and his face wore a mask of blood; and the place crawled with insects and serpents. Like a blind man, he had his hands ahead of himself, his legs splayed, his palms open, feeling and touching things upon which he bestowed names as he encountered them in the dark, pushing some of these items out of the way because he couldn't give them names. And all this time, he was moving upwards, inside another woman, and he was travelling northerly, bearing slightly to the east, that is towards the sun, towards the ocean; and he cut corners, took short cuts, as he crawled towards the cavity from which emanated a voice, a human voice—his own! And he groaned, straggling against becoming his own coffin. Then the wish to be born whole, the wish to burst forth and
be
—this wish took on a life of its own and, for a while, lived its own separate existence. And he was shouting and screaming and kicking against the ribs of the woman who had caged him inside of her. And it was then that he heard the voice of yet another woman call him by name, a woman who was saying, “Askar, wake up. Misra is here.” And he wouldn't wake because he believed his dream was dreaming a dream. And the woman repeated, “Askar, where are you? Wake up, Askar. Misra is here.” The woman who had called his name—Salaado (he saw this directly he opened his eyes, in fact even before he did so, he recognized her voice, etc.); the woman who had called and who was probably in the living-room—Misra! Was this the reason why everything inspired uneasiness, why there was, in the air, something he considered wicked and uncanny?

Now Misra was saying, “I've been in Xamar for three days.”

“And how did you get here?” he asked.

He noticed that neither Hilaal nor Salaado said anything. Indeed, they were uncomfortable and might have preferred to leave them alone together if they'd been sure he didn't mind. And Misra? She was explaining that somebody who knew someone knew a relation of Hilaal's—and that was how she finally traced them.

“You've been here for a couple of hours, have you?”

She nodded. With hindsight, he resolved that her being there during the time he was dreaming would explain his discomfort and sense of awe. Apparently, she wasn't in high spirits either. He would talk to her alone and find out. If she were in need of help, he was certain Salaado and Uncle Hilaal would offer her just that.

“And where are you putting up? Or rather with whom?” he said.

He resisted looking in the direction of Uncle Hilaal. But when he did, he discovered his face weary with concern. It wouldn't be long, thought Askar, before he was ready to take over the conversation and Salaado, he was sure, would come to his aid. The two of them would talk to her, ask her any questions they pleased. Misra, because she had never known them before, would feel at ease with them. At any rate, he didn't know how to put embarrassing questions to a woman who had once been like a mother to him.

Askar withdrew the instant he sensed Uncle Hilaal and Salaado were prepared to relieve him—that is, to replace him. He made a lame excuse to her. Saying to her, “Welcome, Misra,” he took leave of them.

IV

That her voice had lost its “weight” whereas his had broken into a man's; that she had grown smaller, thinner and been reduced to half her original size, whereas he had grown taller, bigger and handsomer; that he had prepared to leave Uncle Hilaal and Salaado's solidly built home in order that he might fight for the liberation of the Ogaden whereas she had left the Ogaden, disguised as another, and come to a Mogadiscio with whose coastal winds she wasn't at all familiar, a Mogadiscio in which she was a refugee but feared to declare herself as one, “because I am sure”, she explained to Hilaal and Salaado when Askar wasn't even there, “somebody from Kallafo is bound to recognize me. And I am afraid of what might happen to me.”

She spoke to them with disarming honesty.

Barren of voice, small of stature, she wept every time she mentioned the word “traitor”—for she was thus described. She was not a traitor. She had not betrayed anyone, had sold no secrets, contacted no enemy. True, she spoke the enemy's language; true, she had spoken to a soldier. But they exchanged no such vital information. The two had talked about whether or not someone she knew would sell milk to the soldiers. She admitted to going round and buying milk for them. She said she reasoned it this way: the civilian populace in the Ogaden had need of money, not of milk which some had plenty of. In so far as she was concerned, she was doing something for “her people”.

She stopped, appearing dismayed by her story, her destiny.

“The problem is, who are ‘my people'?” she said. “For me, my people are Askar's people; my people are my former husband's people, the people I am most attached to. Those who were looking for a traitor and found one in me, rationalize that because I wasn't born one of them, I must be the one who betrayed. Besides, it is easier to suspect the foreigner amongst a community than one's own cousin or brother. But I swear upon Askar's life that I did not inform on the freedom fighters' movements or on their camp of sojourn.”

Salaado thought (and said later to Askar) that Misra had cut a tragic figure and she—Salaado—wept for her in her own heart. Hilaal thought (and said so later to Askar) that Misra was like a tree-stump you see in the far distance and which you mistake for a person. You had your own thoughts but chose not to share them with anybody.

“You see, Askar left when the Somalis were overrunning the Ogaden and the Ethiopian army of occupation in the Ogaden was in total disarray. Inside a year, however, the Russians had entered the war and reversed the situation, turning the Ethiopians into a victorious army literally overnight. Now this was hard to take. I mean, when you've been triumphant for over a year, you don't expect that a weekend's job deprives you of all that you've gained. And as a result of this, there was a great bitterness among Somalis everywhere. Many, I believe, were ready to do anything so that they might survive. One of these, I am sure, sold the information to the Ethiopians,” she said sadly, shaking her head.

After a pause, Hilaal asked, “How many of the fighters were rounded up and killed, did you say?”

“The number is estimated to be between five and six hundred dead and about fifty taken alive, tortured and then executed because they wouldn't speak, wouldn't betray, wouldn't give the locations of the other freedom fighters' camps all over the Ogaden.” She spoke with convincing clarity, having, naturally, given it thought previously

Again after another pause, Salaado asked, “When you were accused of being a traitor, what exactly did they do to you?”

Misra reflected for a long time. To Salaado now, Misra was the infant who had crawled out of an adult's view into another room, somewhere in the same house, and she wanted so much to know what Misra was thinking, which thoughts she was intending to suppress and which to speak. “They set fire to the part of the house I was living in.”

“But you weren't in the house then?” said Hilaal.

“I was not.”

“I am sorry—but was that all?” from Salaado.