Maps (9 page)

Alone, melancholic, he sat on a boulder, his head between his hands, his expression mournful. He was saddest that there was no one else to whom he could put questions about his own identity; there was no one to answer his nagging, “Who am I?” or “Where am I?” Luckily, however, Askar soon found he had a premonition—that the snake would return wearing a mask And lo and behold the snake did return, its face cast in the image of a man whose photograph Askar had seen before, a photograph identified as “Father”. He couldn't, then, help remembering a relation telling him not to harm snakes that had called on the family compound years ago because some snakes were the family's blood relations. He had given this serious thought and requested that someone, preferably an adult, answer his query: “He may be a snake in body and appearance although he is a human relation in all other aspects that are not easily revealed to you or I—is this possible?” Misra had answered, yes.

Suddenly, an overwhelming silence had overcome Askar. And a voice nobody claimed, one which certainly did not emanate from his sub- or unconscious, called him away In other words, a voice lured him on to a field—a field greener with the imaginations's pasture—and he spotted two horses neighing nervously as he approached them. One of the horses was frighteningly ugly, the other handsome like an Arabian horse of noble breed. The colour of the handsome horse, saddled with the finest material man could make, was jet black, sporting a white forehead, white forelegs and dark eyes, although its upper lips were not as white as its forehead. The other was ugly, but it appeared uglier standing by the handsome horse. It was sweaty and smelly and its teeth were as sharp as a sword. Askar suspected the handsome horse knew who he was, for it came up to him (the ugly one stayed behind, greedily eating its grass), and, head down in reverence, stood by him ready to be ridden. The speed, once he was on its back, was great; the grace, enormous; and the comfort of the ride indescribably refreshing. It galloped across rivers, it jumped any mountainous hurdle and flew in the air, as if winged! A horse, was this really a horse? It wasn't as big-boned as the horses he had seen before, but was definitely a great deal taller, and of course heftier, than an Arabian horse. It had legs which adjusted themselves to the conditions of the terrain. When going down a hill, for instance, the horse's front legs would stretch, they would become longer so that he, who had never ridden a horse before and who didn't know how to, wouldn't find it embarrassingly difficult to hold on to the saddle.

Without being told to, the horse stopped.

And a man, clothed in coarse garments of wool, appeared before them. The man was so quiet, so still, it seemed Askar and the horse's breathing disturbed him. The horse went nearer the man, and it bowed its head low, as though in apology for some wrong done. The man patted the horse on the head. And Askar dismounted. The horse, as if dismissed, went away to the bushes behind Askar and the man, hidden from them. Askar saw that the horse did not condescend to eat the grass at all, but waited, its ears pricked, blessed with the foreknowledge that it would be fed on nobler food, on something ambrosial perhaps.

“Greetings,” said the man, his voice golden and sweet and deep. “Greetings, young man, from our land of mysteries, snakes, spiders, and horses and men in coarse garments of wool. Welcome amongst us, traveller. Greetings,' he repeated.

There was a brief silence which appeared endless to Askar, for it was during this period that he was to cross from the darkened area of a dreamscape to that of light. Uninitiated, it took him longer and the man repeated the greetings formula a couple of times until Askar was ready to hear and understand. The man continued: “We met but briefly, you and I, my son. My vision had just begun to grow mistier and the fog had descended on my soul, and thus I could not see nor comprehend. Greetings.”

Askar stared at him in silence.

The man went on, “And I have a message. Would you like to receive it? And will you promise to deliver it to its rightful recipient, my son?”

Askar nodded his head, but didn't ask who the rightful recipient of the message was.

“The Prophet has said, may God bless his soul, that men are asleep. It is only at their death that they are awoken. Can you repeat that to me, word for word, my son?”

Askar nodded his head.

“Please repeat it to me, word for word.”

Askar repeated it.

“And there is another message.”

Askar indicated that he was waiting to receive it, even if it were on behalf of someone else.

“Please listen very carefully.”

Askar waited.

The man said, “An eagle builds a nest with its own claws.” There followed a slight pause. And the man waited. Askar repeated, “An eagle builds a nest with its own claws.” Then the man in the coarse garments of wool took Askar by the hand and the horse, without being called, joined them, but kept a distance, awaiting instructions. The man walked to where the horse was and he whispered something into its ear. And the horse nodded. The horse then indicated to Askar that it was ready to be ridden. Askar, as he mounted the horse, wondered to himself if it would grow wings as bright as dawn and fly in the direction of the morning sun. Whereupon, as they bid each other farewell, the man said to Askar, “May you be awoken in peace.”

And Askar awoke.

II

Awake and washed, handsome, shaven and seventeen years old, he now stood behind a window in a house in Mogadiscio—Uncle Hilaal's house. To his right, a writing desk on which lay, not as yet filled out, a form from the Somali National University Admissions Committee, a form he hadn't had the peace of mind to look at, because he didn't know whether he would, after all, choose to go to university although he had passed his school certificate examination with distinction and-was within his rights to say which course or faculty he wanted. There were, besides the unfilled-out form, two other notes—one from Uncle Hilaal, in whose charge he lived, telling him that Misra had been seen in town and that she had been looking for the whereabouts of Askar and was likely to turn up any day at this doorstep; the other from the Western Liberation Front Headquarters, in Mogadiscio, requesting that he appear before the recruitment board for an interview. He stood behind the window, contemplative and very still—resembling a man who has come to a new, alien land. Presently, he left the window and picked up the forms and the notes in turn. He realized that he couldn't depersonalize his worries as he had believed he might. It occurred to him, as an afterthought, that on reading the note from Uncle Hilaal last night when he got back (he had spent a most pleasant evening out in the company of Riyo, his girlfriend), his soul, out of despair, had shrunk in size while his body became massive and overblown. He wondered why

Misra was here, in Mogadiscio!

Askar was now big, tall, clean as grown-ups generally are, and healthy What would she make of him? he asked himself. He remembered how she used to lavish limitless love on him when sick; how she took care of him with the attentiveness of a child mending a broken toy. She would wash him, she would oil his body twice daily and her fingers would run over his smooth skin, stopping, probing, asking questions when they encountered a small scratch, a badly attended to sore or a black spot. Boils were altogether something else. They never worried her. “Boys have them when and as they grow up,” she said, repeating the old wives' notion about boils. “They are a result of undischarged sperm.”

But how would she react to him and to his being a grown man, maybe taller than she, who knows; maybe stronger and more muscular than she? Would absurd ideas cross her mind: that she would like to give him a bath? Or would she offer to give him a wash or help him soap his back, or—why not?—sponge those parts of his body his hands can't reach, would she? Whose look would be earth-bound, his or hers? Would he be able, in other words, to outstare her?

Standing between them, now that he had turned seventeen and she forty-something, were ten years, each year as prominent as a referee stopping a fight—ten years in which he shed his childish skin and grew that of an adult, under the supervision of Uncle Hilaal. He was virtually a different person. Perhaps he wasn't even a person when she last saw him. He was only a seven-year-old boy and her ward and, sometimes he thought to himself, her toy too. Anyway, the ten years which separated them were crucial in a number of ways.

The world Uncle Hilaal and Salaado had introduced him to, his living in Mogadiscio with them, his schooling there and the world which these had opened up for him, was a universe apart from the one the war in the Ogaden imposed on Misra's thinking. But how did she fare in war? Why did she become a traitor? For there was a certain consistency in one story—that she had sold her soul in order to save her body—but was this true? Was it true that she had betrayed a trust and set a trap in which a hundred Kallafo warriors lost their lives? Or did she surrender her body in order to save her soul? He then remembered that living with Misra wasn't always full of exhilaration and happiness, that there were moments of sadness, that it wasn't always fun. It had its pains, its agonies, its ups and downs, especially when the cavity of her womb overflowed with a tautology flow of blood once every month. When this occurred, she was fierce to look at, she was ugly, her hair uncombed, her spirit low, and she was short-tempered, beating him often, losing her temper with him. She was depressive, suicidal, no, homicidal.

That was how Karin entered his life.

III

Once a month, for five, six, and at times even seven days, Misra looked pale, appeared to be of poor health and depressive, and was of bad temper. And she beat him as regularly as the flow of her cycle. He used to think of her as a Chinese doll which you wound—if you waited long enough, its forehead would fall lifelessly on its chin, when unwound. A makeshift “mother” substituted her. Not one of Uncle Qorrax's wives, no. The woman's name was Karin and she was a neighbour, with grownup children who had gone their different ways, and a husband who lay on the floor, on his back, almost all the time, perhaps ailing, perhaps not, Askar couldn't tell. Karin carried or took Askar wherever she went, as though he were running the same errands as herself. For a long time, he called this woman “Auntie” and never bothered to find out what her name was, wondering if she had any. For all the children in the area, including Uncle Qorrax's, referred to her as “Auntie”, too. One of Uncle Qorrax's sons said she was the wife of “the sleeping husband”.

Karin didn't tell him what the matter with Misra was for a very long time. And when she did, she simply said, “Oh, Misra is bleeding”. This made no sense to Askar. He had not seen any blood (he had once had a nosebleed himself and of course knew what blood looked like) and therefore said he didn't understand. He reasoned that this must be an adult's way of hiding something, or Karin's liking for speaking in parables. He couldn't forget that it was she he had asked what was wrong with her husband and she replied that he had a backache. On making inquiries still further, this time from Uncle Hilaal, he was given the scientific name of the ailment. Now he asked, “Do you ‘bleed' too?”

Karin said, “I'm too old for that, thank God.”

This puzzled Askar. And Karin, with grandmotherly patience, explained: “What Misra has is called
Xayl.
 We women have other ugly names for it. Only women, above or below a certain age, have it—or suffer it. Men don't. When women are in their fifties or older, they stop having it. I haven't suffered from it since I was fifty-three. Do you understand?” she said, her bloodshot eyes fixed on him.

Askar needn't have spoken—she could see from the expression on his face that he didn't follow her explanations. She wished she could make him grasp her meaning— she, who took delight in talking to him about things she hadn't dared talk about with her own children. She said, “When you are a little older, you will understand”, in the manner in which a doctor assures an ailing person that all will be well if they take the tablets as prescribed.