Maps (5 page)

I

M
isra never said to me that I existed for her only in my look. What she said was that she could see in my stare an itch of intelligence—that's all She said she had found it commendable that I could meet death face to face and that I could outstare the Archangel of Death. For, in my stare, there was my survival and in my survival, perhaps “a world's”—mine and hers. I remember how often she held me close to herself, and how, lamenting or plaintive, she would whisper into my ears, endearments the like of which I am not likely to hear ever again. One of these endearments, I recall, was, “My dearest, my little world”! She would then lapse into Amharic, her mother-tongue, and, showering me with kisses, she would utter more of such endearments I wouldn't understand. Then she would end them with the one she most often employed when teasing me or giving me a wash, one which, if translated, would mean, “my little man”!

As a child, curious as the questions he puts to the adults, I asked Misra if a dead woman, that is my mother, could've given birth to a living thing like me. “You were born early in the evening,” Misra said, “sharing a moment's life with a falling star. You were cast into darkness, both of you, although the star dropped into extinction while you existed in the dark. No. You didn't kill your mother.” She concluded her remarks and again held me closer to herself. “Besides, your mother breast-fed you and that, for me, is the reason why you wouldn't take to other women's milk, wet-nurses who offered to help. Your mother, how could she breast-feed you unless she survived giving birth to you—tell me, how?”

And yet, I overheard her, one day, say to Aw-Adan that when she came upon me and encountered my stare, she thought that it appeared to her as though I had made myself, as though I was my own creation. “You should've seen how self-conscious he was. You wouldn't think a little dirty thing would take self-pride in touching his body admiringly the way he was doing. He was like a sculptor whose hands were caressing a self-portrait, an artist whose eyes lit up with self-adulation. A dirty little thing, a self-conscious little thing, but one for whom there was no world other than the one in his little head. And I said to myself, yes, I said to myself… !

It feels like yesterday, the day I was born; and it feels as if I were there, as though I were my own midwife. Misra's recounting of what I was like, what I did, coupled with what she was like, what she was doing—these encase me like a womb and I try unsuccessfully to break loose. It is hard to accept or reject when you are told things about yourself as a child. You haven't the authority to refute them, nor are you easily convinced. Besides, no two persons would agree as to what you looked like or what you did. Does that mean that everybody expresses himself or herself uniquely? Or that everyone is unique and nothing can be expressed correctly?

It is absurd, if you want to know my opinion, absurd because I know of no birth like mine. The hour of my birth, the zodiac's reading, the place of birth, the position of the stars, my mother's death after she had given birth to me, my father's dying a day before I was born—do each of these contribute, in small ways, towards turning the act of my birth into a unique event? And let me not forget Misra—how could I? Misra who eventually tucked me into the oozy warmth between her breasts (she was a very large woman and I, a tiny little thing), so much so I became a third breast; Misra who, on account of my bronchial squeamishness, engulfed me in the same wrapping as her breasts—a wrapping as cosily couched as a brassiere; Misra who, as the night progressed towards daylight, would shed me the way a tree sheds a ripe fruit and who would roll over on her back and away from the wrapping which had covered us both, and I would find myself somewhere between her opened legs this time, as though I was a third leg.

Misra told me, again and again, the details of the day and hour she had found me. And I know what she was wearing that day and with whom she had been. She came into the room I had been in, she elegant-looking and I an ugly mess and nearly dead. I became, immediately she saw me, the centre of her focus. And she picked me up—she, whose hands were life to me. From the instant she lifted me and held me to herself (thus dirtying the brown dress she was wearing), I was a living being and I began to exist. I was dirty, yes; I was nameless, yes; but I existed the second she touched me. Did I stare at her? I do not know. However, my look might have been similar to a blind man's stare, one whose eyes see nothing other than what is inside them. Can I simply say that she brought me into existence?

No one received news of my existence until a day later. For she chose to keep me as her secret find. She held me close to herself, having washed me clean; she held me to herself, warm as a secret one doesn't wish to disclose. I remained nameless for a day and no one accounted for me. She then confided in Aw-Adan, He came and whispered a devotion in my ears; he told his beads in secretive whispers to the Almighty. That same day I was “delivered” into the hands of a world, in which a storm stirred and awoke the dead ghosts. My mother was given name and burial, too; for my father, a prayer was spoken and I was named “Askar”. Perhaps that is when I began to mean something else to Misra. Or is that an absurd statement to make? Until I was sent to school—or rather, until I met the larger world which consisted of a large number of children—I called Misra “Mother”.

What survived my real mother was “memory”, not I. People were, in a general sense, kinder and more generous to me, because my parents had died and I was an orphan. People said kind things about my parents, while they gave their counsel, gratis of course, to Misra, telling her how best to take care of me and how best to raise me, so I would be a monument of remembrance to them. Some looked disfavourably upon my calling Misra “Mother” and took the first opportunity to correct that. Others didn't bother and argued that in time I would know she wasn't my mother. As I grew older and met more and more of these people, I decided I would refrain from calling Misra anything until we were in the privacy of our room, so she could address me, or I her, however each liked. It was during this period that I asked Misra if she remembered anything about her own childhood. She answered that the only thing she could recall was that she wasn't allowed any of the things she wanted to do and she longed to grow old enough so she could be herself. I asked, “As a child you weren't yourself, do you mean?”

She said, “Childhood may best be described as a condition of becoming someone else when with adults, and yourself when alone or with other children; it is difficult getting used to either. I mean, it is difficult getting used to the idea that, although you've been given clothes bought specifically for you, the choice when and why to wear them or whether you would remain without them is not your own.”

I remember, I was six then. And I remember thinking about “nakedness”. In those days, whenever I saw someone naked, I could think of two things — beds and baths. One day I saw Misra and Aw-Adan naked. They were near a bed all right, but they were not in it, nor were they having their baths. I wondered if the choice to remain undressed could be an adult's, too. A child, this I knew for certain, was allowed to roam about in the house or even in the street, totally unclothed. Although “who” the child was mattered a great deal too. If you were the child of one of those people who couldn't afford to buy clothes for themselves, let alone for their children—well, one could understand and sympathize, couldn't one? With this, and many other related and unrelated thoughts in my mind, I formulated a question in my head, a question which, in a roundabout way, had something to do with “nakedness” and which, in so far as I was concerned, directly had to do with my seeing Aw-Adan, the priest, and Misra, naked, although then they weren't in bed but near it. I asked Misra what their “relationship” was.

To Misra, the question, “What's this person's relationship to me?” meant nothing more and nothing less than, “Who is this person?”—which in turn meant, “Is he an uncle or an aunt or a cousin?” To her, the fabric of Somali society was basically incestuous and you had a glimpse into the mind of a Somali if you knew to whom he or she was related by blood or by marriage. Neither she nor Aw-Adan was born Somali and I suspect she knew that I had been aware of that and therefore she must have sensed that no amount of tapestrying her woven story with patterns of her own inventions would have convinced me as the truth might have—life's most excellent embroidery. She smiled sweetly, silently and looked away as though looking for an answer. She might have been inventing a genealogical tree whose branches and roots supplied a pedigree of the appropriate answers to my question. But I doubted very much if she was the type of woman who could lose herself in the eternity of a search for who she was—for she knew who she was.

When I insisted she respond to my question, she said, simply and plainly, as though she were speaking the words for the first time ever, “Aw-Adan? He is a man.”

For a moment or two, she sought and sat under the cool shade of the generic term “The Tree of Man” — and smiled triumphantly. I was sure she was under the wrong impression that she had dealt with my question satisfactorily. Then I asked, “What about Uncle Qorrax? Is he a man too?”

She was most singularly exposed, like an isolated eucalyptus tree a lightning had struck. She sat motionless, speechless, looking away from me, embarrassed.

II

I didn't like Uncle Qorrax. It was no secret I didn't like him. I was barely three days old when I made that abundantly clear to everybody, including himself. The story is told how he arranged to make a formal call on his nephew—that is me—how he had asked that I be washed with a scented soap which he had provided for that very purpose, how he had sent ahead of himself his youngest wife so she would help Misra with the arrangements and be present when he was introduced to me.

He came dressed in his best—a silk sarong he hadn't worn until that day, a most colourful
cimaama
to go with it and a Baravaan hat. Also, he wore his patent-leather shoes and his favourite socks. He left his compound predicting that I would like him. He added, “I am determined to make him like me”. He said so to Shahrawello. I doubt it if she told him how ludicrous he looked, calling on his nephew not even three days old, dressed as though he were visiting a king. But what good would her speaking her mind have done her or anyone else? She stood aside, letting him go past her, and chuckled to herself as he took his long strides. After he had gone, I believe there was an improvised gathering and each of them commented on how absurd this all was, some laughed until their ribs ached. Anyway, Shahrawello is reported to have said that a man is not his clothes but that “a child inherits its mother's hates and loves”. And she bet her life, if anyone was willing to bet a coin of the smallest denomination, that the young one wouldn't like his uncle.

I was asleep when he entered. He was angry at Misra, accusing her of disobedience, scolding her for not having prepared me for the occasion. And he made unnecessary noises so I would wake up. I wouldn't. Not until Misra went out of the room to cry outside. I heard her crying and I awoke. I looked this and that way No Misra. And who was this—a man awkwardly dressed with top hat and all, ugly, thin and tall? What's more, I was lying on my back, helpless, like a beetle on its spine, and my hands, however many times I raised them, returned to me empty—empty of Misra and full of vacant air. Then I heard Uncle's ugly voice, thin and yet sharp, piercing, cutting me in two halves. And I cried a furious cry, so heinous that he froze where he was, frightened at the thought that I might harm myself. When he came nearer me, I cried louder and with vengeance and no one could silence me until Misra returned. Once she was back in the room, you could sense that my cry wasn't as fierce as it had been. All she had to do was to lay a finger on any part of my body and I fell quiet. But my body remained nervous and there was something agitated in the atmosphere until Uncle Qorrax was out of the room. I began to relax when I could no longer hear his ugly voice.