Maps (8 page)

“But what was exceptional in the man's life?” I said.

“He was like every other human being, I think. And death could Ve mistaken him for another person. He was weak and didn't know the meaning of life, didn't know why God created him,” she said. “Like most of us.”

It didn't make much sense to me and I wondered if Aw-Adan had told her a story whose details she had half-forgotten. I asked her, after a long pause, if this was so.

As usual, she was unwilling to admit there were gaps in the story she had told me. So she changed the subject. She said that we could play hide-and-seek until I fell asleep.

She hid; I sought her out.

VII

Did I, in the act of looking, bring into being a world in which there existed not only Misra but many other persons as well? Did I, as a result of this my stare, bring into existence a life of memories in which I am not the rememberer but the remembered? I—who did surrender myself wholly to Misra and her world; I—who existed in a look I myself couldn't have seen or known of; I—who had lived in a universe dark as a photographer's room, a universe developing into identifiable beings, some in duplicate, others in as many copies as one wanted. A look? Or a touch?

For me, life began in her hands and it was
in
her touch that I began to exist. Not in the savage stare which was so primitive it penetrated to the depth of her guilt, a savage stare which stirred in her soul a selfless desire to give and give and give and therefore
be
, exist only in the giving. Is this why I touched her whenever the chance presented itself to me? And is this why her physical absence upset me greatly when I was tiny—because I couldn't reprint, on the screen of my undeveloped memory, my image of her in as many copies as I wanted? Anyway, my life was in her hands and she could do what she wanted with it and she did very well by it. Yes, by all accounts, she satisfied my uncles and aunts and other relations and was able to obtain their approval—although there were secrets between her and myself, secrets to which no other person had access. These secrets comprised things we did together, she and I; they consisted of games we played in our room when darkness fell and the silence of night engulfed all and everything and we went under the bedcovers and she told me stories or taught me things she wasn't supposed to. These secrets included the fact that I knew everything she did. For example, one of my uncles used to come and knock on the small window of our room after midnight and Misra would get out of bed and wash and prepare and wait for a second knock. At times she would open the door and he would enter and make love to her on the floor or she would follow him to another place. Often, I pretended as if I were asleep. But at times I would cry so violently I would spoil the night for them, she would get back into bed with me and would calm me down, hold me between her breasts and would whisper something in a serious tone—either, “I hope you'll learn to be on your own like all other children of your age”; or, her eyes misted with tears of anguish, she would say, “I will kill you unless you behave yourself. I'll strangle you—so as to live my own life.” Then she would place her index and middle fingers on her closed eyes and the fingers would rest there, as though they were the holes of a flute. And she would continue: “I will kill you or I will kill myself.” I would cry more furiously and would wet myself in the enraged frenzy of a pervasive self-expression, and her tears would drip on me. She would lift me up, disregarding the mess of my moisture and the fact that she was dressed in her most elegant dress, and she would rock me to silence. She would place me within her reach, either on the floor or on a stool. If she moved away from me, if her hand didn't lay on me, she knew I would burst into another convulsive cry and would also vomit or cough or do both. After a long bath, I would sit up and, as though nothing had occurred, would play And she would hide and I would look out for her in the dark or lighted sections of the room. When neighbours or relations who had overheard my tumultuous cries the previous night asked after me the following morning, Misra, generous and loving, would not speak of the inconveniences I had caused her, nor would she speak of the visitor who had called after midnight. We would look at each other and share a grin or a smile, depending on our respective moods. But neither would talk of our common secret. When nervous, she would rise from where she had been sitting and look away. I would smile to myself triumphantly, knowing that I had her whole life in the power of my mouth and I could do what I wanted with it.

I'll admit that many things are confused in my memory. My head, I feel sometimes, will explode with the intensity of the anecdotes I remember — events which in all likelihood didn't take place, not, at any rate, as I remember them. One thing which I definitely recall, with the clarity of a daylight occurrence, is how “responsible” Misra felt regarding me, my body and my thoughts. She was responsible for me in the same way as the dweller of a certain place takes upon himself or herself most things that happen in it, so much so that water shortages or power-cuts and similar anomalies are explained away as personal shortcomings. If I had a cold, if my stomach ran or if I spoke unduly rudely to anyone, Misra explained — she justified or interceded for me or she would say that she would take the beating on herself. If taken ill, she would explain why my constitution had weakened or why I wasn't as healthy and strong as I used to be. But when not in public, she would complain to me directly or grumble or mumble, within my hearing, as though she were talking to herself. “It is in your element to be mean,' she would accuse me. “Why, you know I am a foreigner here and that if you fall ill, your people will say it is because I haven't taken good care of your food. You also know that, when you do well, the credit is not mine but your people's, that is your [Somali] nation whose identity I do not share. Why must you make my life a misery?”

But there are many things of which I am not sure. For instance, Fm not sure who said this: “Your look was smooth — like pebbles in a stream”. Misra herself? Will someone tell me what it means — in concrete terms? Please?
Will you
tell me? will you explain?
You
who sit in judgment over me. Will somebody? Yes?

I

A
nd he was running and running, he was breathing hard and running. But he didn't know why he was running, nor did he know what he was fleeing from. He ran, blind with fright; he ran senselessly. And he couldn't define the purpose of his running—but neither could he stop. He crossed nearly three-quarters of a large forest and wouldn't stop even when he saw that he had entered a clearing littered with discarded dolls of which he hardly took any notice. He couldn't tell how many hours it had taken him to get to where he was or whether he had been running in circles. Dawn was beginning to break.

And something up in the heavens, luminous and small, attracted his attention. He asked himself, could it be possible—Venus at dawn? But he heard a noise and he turned—a woman who was thin and dark was standing in front of him, a woman who resembled Misra and yet who wasn't Misra for she introduced herself when he approached her not as Misra but Ummat; and he made as if to speak, he started saying “I am…”, but left the sentence unfinished. Misra offered to be his guide. She promised she would answer his questions, all his questions. And it was to be so. Most people they met along the way had their bodies tattooed with their identities: that is name, nationality and address. Some had engraved on their skins the reason why they had become who they were when living and others had printed on their foreheads or backs their national flags or insignia. There was a man on whose chest was tattooed the Somali flag with three points of the star missing and Misra explained to Askar why. They also met a man carrying a placard on which was written the words “a martyr from the Ogaden”. Askar thought he had seen the man before. Then he turned to face her so he could ask if she too had known him. Alas! She was not there anymore, not only was she not there, but she wasn't in his memory either. She had disappeared completely and he now asked himself, was it possible that his “I am” addressed to Misra was not, after all, incomplete? And he was Misra? In his mind, he removed the dots denoting the incomplete nature of the statement and spoke it again. He heard himself say “I am”, and the echo returned to him a sound which he found to be meaningful

Now he looked up to see if “Venus” too had vanished. Here he wasn't totally disappointed—but in a peculiar way curiously reflective. He felt awkward, like when you cannot name something you know, when the combination of letters in your mouth will not match the sound your lips are willing to make. It was not “Venus”, he decided in his Edenic impression. It was a species, looking rather like a spider, large and colourful—a spider as huge as the dreamscape he had been treading, a spider which had managed to weave from out of that small belly, out of that tiny body, a web so complex, a trap so long, one would be lost in it. The spider ascended the ladder of lengths of its innards.

Now he moved away, convinced that he had to do just that. And he walked. After half an hour, he came upon a river about to break at the banks. Undisturbed, he sat under a tree and contemplated while waiting. But what was he waiting for? He didn't know. He sat, waiting; he sat, burdened with a Thomist's questioning of the self: he told himself he knew what purpose rivers served—to irrigate and help grow food in the form of fruits, vegetables, etc.; but what did man's existence serve, or whom? To worship God? To study God through nature? Why was
he
born? For some unforeseeable reason related to the thought that had just crossed his mind, Askar remembered the story of a man who challenged everything, a man who contested that “even mirrors didn't reflect the true identity of things and persons”. The man was bald—but he chose to refuse to see his baldness, although people confirmed what the mirror reflected, or rather what it saw. People said that he was insane, they argued, how could anyone contend that what people saw and mirrors confirmed wasn't true? Months later, the man went insane. Would Askar in the end go mad questioning things, challenging received opinions?

Finally, he was standing in front of a huge portal with the letter
A
boldly printed on it. He remembered that, perhaps in a previous life, he had seen that portal before and he had been turned away from it by a uniformed man. Now he hadn't the courage to knock on it, nor did he have the curiosity to discover to what secret world the gate would have given him access. He sat on a boulder by the side of the road. To his left, there was a stream whose banks were green with weeds. It appeared as though a fountain had, just at that instant, right in front of him, right in his presence, given birth to an aqueous marvel of a stream in which fishes of all sizes and descriptions chased one another without any sense of inhibition or forbearance.

And he discovered, looking up, that the sky above him was wearing the seven heavenly garments, whose colours matched that of a rainbow he had never seen before—one was of ruby; one of silvery pearls; one gold; another white silver; one of orange hyacinth; and, lastly, one of shining brightness, the likes of which no human, other than a mystic or a prophet, had ever perceived. To his right, when he turned, there was a tree on one of whose branches perched “talking dolls”. He couldn't understand what the dolls were saying. However, he later wondered if these might possibly have been the product of an exhausted mind's aberrant way of expressing itself.

Then a voice (was it coming from within himself or without—he couldn't tell), a voice, alive with urgency, called to him. First, he was frightened and wouldn't stir at all. Then he heard a silky sound, that is, he heard the hissing sound of a snake approaching from his right, and, not in the least frightened, he moved towards the snake. Meanwhile, his hands, as he went to encounter the snake, gently touched a spot on his thigh where a snake had bitten him when small. He stared at the snake, expecting it would wear an expression of recognition; and yes; he saw the snake's forked tongue cut the air surgically, its head nodding, its throat throbbing with coded speech. Then all movements, within himself and without, ceased; and he didn't know where he was or who he was; and he no longer had any identity or name; nor was the snake there either. For a second or so, he was frightened, as if he were a traveller who had misplaced his travelling documents. Was it conceivable, he asked himself, that he had lost whatever knowledge he had gained about himself through the years?