North of Dawn

by Nuruddin Farah

  “Last time was talked, she was heading for town to meet up with Arla.”

  “Would you ring her and ask why we can’t get in?”

  Waliya’s phone rings on and on, no answer.

  “Do you by any chance have Arla’s Danish mobile number?”

  Naciim imagines Arla moving around the city and putting up with an array of friends after her partner-beating Dane has given her the beating of her life; he also imagines the Dane to be on the run, changing hotels, like the criminal he is, to avoid apprehension.

  “Mum thinks you have an unhealthy interest in Arla.”

  “Forget about calling Arla,” he says curtly. “Let’s go.”

  “Admit it. You have a crush on the woman.”

  “You are out of your mind.”

  “Mum doesn’t like the way you undress her with your eyes.”

  “Old women don’t interest me, especially when I have plenty of girls my age to chase.”

  “That’s an idle boast,” she says.

  “I have a girlfriend I can introduce you to, if you like.”

  Then it flashes through his mind that talking this way to his sister about having a girlfriend when at her age she has never had the chance to date anyone is cruel and unfair. He says, “Let us go.”

  “Where?”

  “To Grandpa,” he says.

  Then he telephones Mugdi, telling him that he and Saafi can’t get into the apartment and his mother is not there. He says to the old man, “Can Saafi, and I come to your place, cook, have dinner, and wait until they know why we can’t gain access into it and what has become of our mum, who seems not to be here, nor answering the phone?”

  “Of course, please come.”

  So with his satchel on his back, tired, angry and hungry, Naciim and Saafi take the tram to Mugdi’s. Immediately they are there, Naciim, with little prompting from the old man, prepares an improvised meal for all three in no time at all. They sit to eat and Mugdi asks Saafi, “How’s work?”

  “I’m enjoying it more than I imagined possible,” Saafi says. “My manager wants me to think of myself as the face of the Lego showroom.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “I answer people’s questions, I show the parents and the children who come together how the interlocking bricks work. I answer the telephone at the reception desk. We’re busy and I like it, because the effort I put into mastering Norwegian has at long last come in handy.”

  “Is your mother happy you’re working?”

  “You know Mum no longer runs the nursery?”

  If Mugdi does not mention Zubair and Fanax’s names, the two men who in one way or another were linked to her mother’s running the nursery, it is because he feels this will embarrass Saafi and there is no need to do that.

  “Mum is happy I bring in income,” she says.

  “The decision not to object to Saafi working, if anything, proves that Mum is guided more by practical matters than by religious idealism,” Naciim says.

  “Is anything wrong with that?” Saafi asks.

  Mugdi takes a sip of water and watches Naciim, who makes small movements with his hands, expressive of pronounced restlessness, as if he wishes to change the subject of their conversation. Mugdi says, “Is something bothering you?”

  “Saafi and I had a conversation on the way here—she asked why it takes a country that has collapsed into total anarchy like Somalia such a long time to recover from the strife and mayhem.”

  Mugdi replies, “Imagine a single house collapsing and causing a handful of deaths. Then think of the damage that would be caused if an entire country collapsed in on itself, the way Somalia did in 1991. Keep in mind that the implosion has not been limited to the country and those who live in it. The collapse has had repercussions for every Somali around the world, no matter if they are still in the country or if they abandoned the country to its tragic fate and sought refuge in other lands. These seismic consequences haunt even those Somalis who have never known the country, whether because they left when very young, or were born elsewhere to parents who had fled the fighting.”

  “What are you saying, Grandpa?” says Saafi.

  “I am saying that the disintegration of Somalia remains a live issue, very much still unfolding. Nothing quite like it has happened before, in Africa or anywhere else—an entire country collapsing in on itself like a tower of cards.”

  “And we’re victims of it?” Saafi asks.

  “More like products of the collapse.”

  “Why do you think some countries come to the aid of other communities that are in full-fledged disaster, when others don’t?”

  “Because not everyone helps a needy old blind man cross a busy intersection,” replies Mugdi. “Some do and some don’t.”

  Naciim remembers riding a tram with Janine when they happened to sit across the aisle from an elderly Norwegian man, most likely blind, who had half-dried phlegm sticking to his white shirt and two buttons in the wrong holes. The two of them debated whether to bring these blemishes to the old man’s attention, Janine arguing against bothering him, saying it could not matter to him in the least if the buttons were misaligned or his shirt stained, as he would never see it; Naciim suggesting that that they at least remove the thick mucus or bring it to his attention.

  He asks, “Why would some help, others not?”

  “It is an emotional thing, helping or not helping,” says Mugdi.

  “A country is bigger than one’s emotions.”

  “What happened in Somalia is of a different order from the horror that occurred in Rwanda,” says Mugdi. “But it is just as frightening to the victims caught in the snares of its cruelty. And it is terrible that so far no reconciliation efforts have been possible. And the world is oblivious.”

  “Is that right?” asks Naciim.

  Mugdi says, “The world could not decipher the signposts. A people with the same singular culture, the same religion, and the same language tearing into one another for reasons that make no sense to those outside the peninsula: that is why. As the saying goes, a stream cannot rise above its own source.”

  Saafi is about to say something when Naciim’s phone rings. The caller ID identifies the number as Danish and he answers it, his voice playful. “There you are, at long last,” he says. Then, because of Mugdi and Saafi’s quizzical look, he becomes self-conscious and he opts to put on the speaker, so everyone can hear everything.

  “Where are you?” Arla asks.

  Instead of answering her question, he asks, “Do you or does Mum know why we couldn’t get into the apartment, Saafi and I?”

  “We couldn’t open the door ourselves and we went away.”

  He shares his supposition with everyone listening. He says, “Here’s what I think happened: someone, perhaps unwittingly, engaged the night latch snib on the Yale lock on the apartment door. The key won’t unlock from the outside if the night latch button is in the wrong position.”

  Arla says, “I’ve no idea what you are talking about.”

  Then he says, “Let me talk to Mum, please.”

  A few minutes pass before Waliya comes on the line. And as soon as she does, she wants to know if he has remembered to pick up his sister from work. He says, “Yes, Mum. We are both here, at Grandpa’s,” and then he repeats his theory about the lock aloud.

  She says, “How are we going to get back in?”

  “I’ll call out a locksmith.”

  “Where do you want us to meet and when?”

  “Right in front of the apartment, maybe in two hours max.”

  He hangs up, calls a locksmith from Mugdi’s landline, and arranges to meet the man at the apartment. When Saafi and Naciim are ready to leave, Mugdi gives him enough cash to cover both the cost of the call-out charge as well as the cab fare home.

  Just before the taxi arrive
s, Saafi takes herself into the toilet. While she is gone, the old man asks the boy how he knows about night latch knobs on the Yale lock and how they work. Naciim explains that he has once toyed with the idea of keeping an unwanted intruder from entering the apartment and experimented with the Yale lock on the apartment door.

  “And who might this undesirable visitor be?” asks Mugdi.

  “I didn’t like Imam Fanax’s frequent visits to our home.”

  Saafi reenters the kitchen and she concludes from Mugdi and Naciim’s small, albeit subtle, nervous movements that she may have been the subject of Grandpa and Naciim’s conversation while she was in the lavatory.

  But no one says and they depart to take the waiting taxi home.

  Naciim and Saafi arrive by taxi a few minutes before the locksmith. The man has barely begun working when Waliya and Arla emerge from the lift, seemingly exhausted.

  Naciim says nothing until the door to the apartment is open. His mother rushes in, mouthing the word “bathroom.” As Saafi pays the locksmith, Arla calls the lift.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” he asks her.

  Arla says, “I’ll see you soon.”

  Naciim and Saafi exchange surprised looks when Arla shares the lift going down with the locksmith, waving them goodbye.

  When he and Saafi finally enter, his mother’s door is shut and the tape of the Koran is back on.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Mugdi is at the gym relaxing after a long workout, buoyed by the thought that he will go home, shave, and shower, before joining Nadia in the evening for dinner. He knows she has taken the day off to do the shopping and the cooking, proof that she is taking the occasion seriously.

  Of course, he wishes Gacalo were alive and that she was joining him at Nadia’s. Furthermore, he reminds himself that on the few occasions when he and Nadia have met—once at the café, following Birgitta’s emails introducing them, and three more times at the library for a chat—Mugdi has impressed on Nadia how much he misses Gacalo, almost a year and a half after her passing.

  On the tram home, Mugdi winces and shifts uneasily when he spots his face faintly mirrored in the window. As he turns away, avoiding his own reflection, he remembers his dream from the previous night. In the dream, Mugdi is traveling to Geneva to visit Timiro and her daughter. At the Oslo airport, he stands at the check-in counter, and asked to show his passport, rummages in his shoulder bag, but discovers it is missing. He checks many pockets, first of the bag, then of his trousers, his jacket, and his shirt. He finds the printout of his ticket, his Norwegian ID, but he knows that is no good because “You are traveling international, sir,” says the young woman at the counter, “so you must show me your passport.” Realizing there is no way he will be allowed to board his flight, he decides to return to the house to search for it, telephone his daughter to tell her what has happened, and catch a later flight.

  He searches in the drawers of his desk, and near the printer, and behind the computer. He remembers the Somali proverb that when desperately searching for a lost camel, one may be tempted to look for it in the small milk container. He is going through the pockets of his shoulder bag again when his phone rings and his daughter asks him for an update. “I can’t find it,” he says.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll apply for an emergency passport.”

  After a long silence, Timiro says, “You wouldn’t misplace your passport if Mum were around.”

  Seated in the tram, Mugdi thinks it would be easy to dismiss his daughter’s assertion in his dream as utter nonsense. Still, he is aware that he acquired Norwegian nationality thanks to his wife, who was an employee of the state, and he one of her dependents, his name and destiny linked to hers, just as the widow and her children later became tied to her. No doubt if Gacalo were alive, he would get his emergency passport faster and with fewer questions asked. He remembers the bureaucratic obstacles when, as a widower, he wanted to change their joint bank account to his name only, the bank insisting that he complete half a dozen forms. His hyphenated nationality is unclear to many Norwegians who cannot help assuming that he must have obtained his status as a refugee.

  That evening, he takes a taxi to Nadia’s place, arrives early, and dawdles around the block before he knocks on her door at precisely eight o’clock. Nadia appears and they hug. She leads him into the living room and points him to a seat, waiting until he is comfortable to ask what he would like to drink.

  “A glass of water please,” he says.

  “Mineral or tap?”

  “I am happy with either.”

  She returns carrying a tray with a glass of water, a piece of lemon floating in it, and bowls of nuts, raisins, and savory snacks; the half-drunk glass of white wine is apparently for her. She sits down on the couch facing him.

  She says, “Tell me, did you not come to the reference desk at the library a few years ago and ask me for a religious text in Geez?”

  “I did indeed. But why do you ask now?”

  “Because it struck me earlier today that I had met you a long time ago,” she says. “The memory that I had filed away unconsciously popped back and there it was.”

  “I remember asking about the religious texts because I came across an article by Professor Pankhurst that awakened in me an interest in ancient Ethiopic religious writings.”

  “But you never came back to collect it?”

  “It was a passing interest, so I didn’t.”

  “And what about the writings interested you?”

  “Maybe deep down sacred texts have always held a certain fascination for me, as do secular classics of other nations. I’ve always wanted to hold each of the sacred texts and the world’s classics in my hands, in deference to the history and the culture that produced them.” He pauses, then speaking with tremendous care, says, “Born and raised in the oral tradition, I have a soft spot for anything written, perhaps because I assume societies without written traditions will forever remain beholden to those who belong to nations with scripts and to the technology that is integral to their history and culture.”

  “I’ve never thought about it that way.”

  Nadia is, after all, head of the special reference collections at the National Library, responsible for antique, rare, and irreplaceable books. Mugdi is in no position to read the Ethiopic text any more than he can decipher ancient Greek. But his passing interest was in evaluating the literary contributions Professor Pankhurst had elucidated, and Mugdi, as a layperson, wished to know as much as he could. But when it took Nadia a long time to return with the text, he left, telling Nadia’s colleague that he would be back tomorrow. The next day, he received the devastating news of his son’s suicide.

  As he sits in Nadia’s house and looks back on that day, Mugdi cannot determine if it is the anger he felt on receiving the terrible news that is resurfacing now, or if it is the pain that has grown worse over the years and keeps revisiting him in his nightmares. When Nadia asks him if he is okay, he sits up straight, startled, his eyes open wide and his breathing uneven. Eventually he says, “I am okay.”

  Nadia takes a deep breath and excuses herself. As she heads toward the kitchen, she says, “I am hungry and presume you are too.”

  She offers him a glass of red wine with dinner.

  Mugdi fusses with the table napkin, which he ties round his throat, in the way he remembers from his days in Italy, to protect the front of his white shirt. As he eats, he takes care not to spill even a drop.

  He says, “Wonderful, the tomato soup.”

  “I love simple eating,” she says.

  “Definitely, it is healthier.”

  He enjoys the first course, a little surprised that tomato soup might taste as good as this. Neither says anything for a while. Then Nadia breaks the silence with evident reluctance, her voice low and hesitant. She asks, “How is the young man?”

&
nbsp; Nadia has never met Naciim or Saafi. But from what Birgitta has told her, Mugdi is very fond of his young charges. Birgitta has also told her that an unhealthy tension pervades the relationship between their mother, whom she also hasn’t met, and Mugdi. Anyhow, the rapport between the boy and Mugdi reminds her of an African boy she had the good luck to get to know and help, when she worked as a librarian in Tanzania.

  Now she asks, “How are they, the boy and the girl?”

  “They’re both fine.”

  “Birgitta describes the boy as ambitious, hardworking, and full of charm, and she tells me that the girl has lately recovered her sense of self-worth, given what she has been through.”

  “There is much to admire in both my young charges,” he says.

  Nadia says, “In Tanzania, I once met a boy of a similar age as Naciim, bright and self-reliant, who would come to the library often and sometimes go to sleep in the middle of the afternoon, his head painfully falling forward. His name was Isaac. After I made friends with him, I discovered that he came from a poor family, which couldn’t afford more than one meal a day. He was the oldest of six children, four boys and two girls.”

  Mugdi senses a fresh surge of emotion as he relives the instant when he first met Naciim at the airport: he knew right away that they would get along. He asks Nadia, “Did you go out of your way to get acquainted with Isaac?”

  “Yes, I did. But I had a problem with Isaac’s parents the moment they found out that, although I am nominally Christian, I never attended church. They made it clear they didn’t want the boy to have anything to do with me. But the boy acted in a clever way, telling them one thing and doing something else. We would meet secretly at the home of a pastor, a friend of mine. In the end, I not only helped him to graduate from high school, but I also arranged a scholarship for him to Sweden, with help from a group of proselytizers busy converting the Tanzanian poor to the faith.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Back home, in Dar es Salaam, working as a GP at a hospital, where I hear he is much liked. His parents are now happy with his achievements.”