North of Dawn

by Nuruddin Farah

  Mugdi cannot help venting a broadside about shortsighted parents. He says, “I dislike adults standing in the way of their children getting a good education, only to make their claim on them later when they succeed, despite their obstruction.”

  “What’s the children’s mother like?” she asks.

  Mugdi explains, “Waliya is very austere and so for a long time the boy and the girl felt tied down, constrained by their mother’s monastic tendencies. Her religious convictions do not even allow the boy to listen to music, or the girl to live the life of a girl to the fullest. She discourages them from watching TV because they may glimpse men or women in flimsy summer wear. She wants them to devote their entire lives to the service of the faith, and, whereas the girl is more religious, the boy doesn’t appear comfortable with that.”

  “Did he get along with your late wife?”

  “He loved Gacalo. Everybody loved Gacalo.”

  Tears come into his eyes, blinding him. And he shifts uneasily, embarrassed.

  “He must be a joy to have around.”

  “Yes, he is. To me, he is family.”

  They fall silent, and Nadia gets up to gather the dishes, taking them to the sink and returning with a tray on which there are small plates, a pint of ice cream, and a bowl of fruit. Mugdi points at the fruit, chooses an easy-peel orange and, without waiting for a knife, uses his fingers.

  She asks, “Dessert wine?”

  “No, thanks.”

  They move to the living room and sit in more comfortable chairs. “I know that you’re busy translating Rolvaag’s Giants. But tell me, how close are you to completing the work?”

  He says, “Nowhere near, because of the interruptions, some due to the arrival of the widow and her children, and more recently, because of my wife’s passing.”

  “Does anyone apart from Birgitta, Johan, and myself know that you’re trying to bring the two communities closer together, the Somali and the Norwegian?” she asks.

  “I’ve not spoken to anyone myself.”

  She asks, “Would you mind if I mentioned it to a friend of mine who works in the Ministry of Culture? I think she’ll be interested in setting aside a special grant to help you complete the work.”

  The coffee is bubbling loudly, evidence that it is ready. When Nadia returns with their cups, he says, “Thanks. I’m not interested in grants.”

  “But can I mention it to him anyway?”

  “You may mention it to anyone you like.”

  His mind wanders off in the silence that follows. And before he knows it, he is thinking of the reason why he opposes the idea of getting a grant to translate Rolvaag. Doing the work has been a joy and he is not keen on obtaining a grant for it. He hopes that Somali readers will be happy when they come across it and read it for their own edification.

  “In your research into the period when the first Norwegians migrated to the Dakota territories, is there something you’ve learned that has shocked you?” Nadia asks.

  He says, “It did shock me, I have no idea why, when one of the newly arrived Norwegians said he wanted to purchase a slave to liberate him from his farm labor.”

  “Anything else?”

  “When one of them writes a letter home describing Sitting Bull, the Native American revered by people as a holy man, to be a rogue.”

  “How did the resistance fighter die, again?”

  “He died at the hand of a police officer at Standing Rock,” says Mugdi. “Perhaps we can agree that one group’s resistance fighter is another group’s rogue. The Norwegian fishermen-turned-landowners weren’t seen as any different from the other white Americans, who massacred the natives to lay their hands on more land. Rolvaag, however, exudes goodwill toward the Indians. And that pleases me a lot.”

  “You are saying that art is a humanizer?”

  “That is one way of putting it.”

  When Nadia yawns, Mugdi takes it as a sign that it is time to call for a taxi. As he leaves, he promises that he will have her over for dinner one of these days.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Naciim is dolled up in his favorite newly acquired winter wear: a Canadian down jacket, well-insulated secondhand heavy-duty boots, and a full fur hat. His heart beating with frenzied joy, he thinks, “What a pretty sight,” at the fresh snow falling, the earth before him serene, and the scene, with which he is surrounded, quiet. Not only is he now at long last used to the weather in Oslo, but he is also starting to love the long-drawn winter darkness, maybe because he had only known the dreariness, the heat, the dust, and the aridness of a refugee camp—and he is now in a place with contrastable seasons.

  It is rush hour and everyone is equally wrapped up against the falling snow, the scarves heavy and the hats furred. Naciim recalls his mother complaining during their first Norwegian winter that she felt as if the marrow in her bones had been replaced with newly melted ice. He now feels the chill in the wind and the unrelenting arrows benumbing his senses.

  He is on his way to a computer repair shop, taking the tram after leaving school. He is planning to pick up his computer and then meet with Janine at a café to take her to Mugdi’s house, in hopes that the two of them can enjoy an hour’s privacy in his room before Mugdi gets back from the library.

  The tram arrives and he collides with a clutch of boys and girls gathered at its door, pushing his way into a pocket of untaken space where he can stand and read if he so wishes. He is about to bring out a book when his wandering gaze falls on a woman in a niqaab, only her eyes visible. He has a view of the woman from the side, with the advantage that he can see her but she cannot see him. The woman, in silhouette, is facing forward and communicating, he suspects, with the European man sitting next to her. Naciim observes the pattern of their conversation: the man, also facing forward, speaks, the woman listens, her head a little inclined, then she speaks, but he doesn’t reply, either nodding his head yes or shaking his head no. At no time do they look each other directly in the face. It is when the woman smiles and he sees her teeth, stained brown from drinking the well water in the region of Somalia where she comes from, that Naciim, shocked, realizes it’s Arla. He assumes that the man she is with is her partner to whom she is “sort of married.”

  Then she rises, pushing her way past other passengers to the tram’s door, apparently ready to alight. Naciim waits until both she and the man have gotten out, then darts out after them. He runs to catch up and then thinks better of it, slowing down to ensure that Arla is unaware he is following her.

  The pair take their first left, then right, before coming to a stop in front of a tall, eight-story building. The man takes something out of his pocket, which Naciim presumes to be a bunch of keys. Arla waits as the man opens the heavy metal door and motions to her to go in ahead of him.

  Naciim stops less than fifty meters away and, just in case one of them looks in his direction, turns his back and waits, his heart pounding. He half turns and watches as the door opens, Arla entering first and then the man. Naciim gives them no more than a minute. Then he does as he has seen film actors in thrillers do: he moves with great speed and gets to the heavy door before the pneumatic device locks it shut. By the time he arrives in the lobby, Arla and the man have already taken one of the lifts. Again, as he has seen actors shadowing prey do, he watches the lift monitor until it stops at the seventh floor.

  Naciim enters the second lift, and presses the button not for the seventh floor but for the sixth, intending to walk up the stairs to the seventh. There he waits at the corner and sees Arla’s companion come out of Apartment 11 and pull the door shut. The man is whistling a happy tune with which Naciim is not familiar, and takes the lift down.

  Naciim realizes that he does not have enough time to collect his computer if he is to meet Janine. Worried about being late, he hurries toward the Metro stop. Fortunately, he has just gone through the turnstile when a train pulls i
n and he hops on, thinking how lucky he has been in his pursuit.

  He moves like greased lightning and is at the café huffing and puffing.

  “You okay?” asks Janine, as they kiss.

  Mugdi has barely saved the day’s translation work when he hears someone entering the house. As he heads downstairs he practically collides with Naciim.

  They are delighted to see each other—the boy has been spending most of his afternoons with Janine—and he and the old man hug. Naciim has made a point of telephoning him often, but hasn’t come round for nearly two weeks. Now he puts down his school satchel and replaces Mugdi’s house key in one of its small compartments, undecided what to do.

  Naciim starts to speak but trails off and cranes his neck, looking out. Mugdi asks, “Is there a problem, young man?”

  “I am not alone,” replies Naciim.

  Mugdi discerns a faint shadow in the near distance approaching the door with caution—a tall, slim, flat-chested girl Naciim’s age, wearing tight jeans and tennis shoes that were once white but are currently scrawled with messages similar to the missives scribbled on the cast of a broken leg, wishing its wearer a speedy recovery. The girl’s lips are thick, her blond hair wafer thin on her scalp. Mugdi says, “Well, ask her in!” As Janine steps inside, he says “Welcome” to her.

  Naciim closes the door with extra care. Then, looking embarrassed, he says, “My friend’s name is Janine.”

  They shake hands. “Grandpa Mugdi,” he says.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, sir.”

  Naciim says, in Somali, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you would be here and I hope we are not disturbing you.”

  Mugdi remembers going through this many years ago, when Timiro and Dhaqaneh were teenagers and at the cinema or somewhere else with someone they were involved with and happened to bump into him, their father. It embarrassed them to the extent that they might pretend not to see him, or that they were not serious about the boy or girl they were with.

  Naciim says, “We’ve brought a film by an Iranian director called A Separation. Have you seen it, Grandpa?”

  “Yes,” says Mugdi.

  “Did you like it?”

  “Grandma and I both loved it.”

  Mugdi checks his sports bag and discovers that he has forgotten his water bottle as well as his mobile phone upstairs and so he retrieves them.

  Upstairs, Mugdi thinks that despite Naciim’s being the well-behaved teenager he knows him to be, there is no denying that the boy has lived a life haunted by sex, from what Dhaqaneh told Gacalo and what she, in turn, shared with him. Dhaqaneh met Waliya when she could be described as a loose woman, so promiscuous that she had several male friends whom she went to nightclubs with, often leaving Saafi and Naciim with the neighbors—or that enigma, Arla—and not coming home until the small hours. Or sometimes, when there was no one to watch the children, she would simply take them along, especially when they were babies, and make love to a man in the same house, or even room, while they slept. Dhaqaneh made it his life’s mission to make her a good woman and provide for her children.

  Mugdi comes downstairs, happy that the boy thinks well enough of him to bring his girlfriend to the house. In any event, there is nowhere else the two can meet and delight in a moment’s privacy; his mother would be up in arms with the idea. Maybe the girl’s parents wouldn’t be happy either, if she took home a dark-skinned Muslim refugee who had been given papers only recently.

  He shouts to Naciim, “I am off now,” from the kitchen, a safe distance from the TV room where the young man and Janine are supposedly watching a film.

  Mugdi slams the door shut.

  Naciim and Janine pretend they are watching the movie on the big screen in a cinema. To this end, he makes popcorn and gets two Cokes, and they sit side by side on the couch.

  However, it does not take long before Janine moves closer to Naciim and her hand touches his, and his other hand is all over her, her face, her breasts, and her lips. There is a wildness to their actions, motivated by the wish to satisfy each other, as would any boy and girl, both seventeen, never mind that they come from different backgrounds or will return home to parents who would not want them to be together.

  By the time they are ready for the serious business that has brought them here, Naciim suggests they leave the movie running and go to his room, where they take off their clothes and make love in privacy, certain Mugdi will not disturb them if he returns before or after they are done. This being his first time, he is nervous initially. But Janine is very sweet and gentle about it and does not tease him about his ineptness—and he is very grateful to her, although he does not say it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  It is four in the morning when, awakened by pounding on the door of his mother’s apartment, Naciim sits up and rubs the sleep from his eyes, wondering who could be at the door at this hour, and why they were pounding so heavily on it. When the heavy knocking resumes and he hears no movement coming from his mother’s or sister’s rooms, he puts on a robe, his mobile phone in the pocket of his dressing gown, and heads to the entryway. When he looks through the peephole, he makes out at least four or five uniformed officers, two of whom are bearing short-armed guns. They seem to be speaking urgently in Norwegian, though he cannot work out exactly what they are saying. He immediately realizes the seriousness of the situation but instead of panicking, he tells himself it is time he stood up to these men and played the role of the Mahram assigned to him by tradition. His voice firm and unafraid, he says, “Who is it?”

  A male voice says, “Open the door.”

  “Spesialkommando. Open up. Or we will break the door.”

  Naciim opens the door, taking photos of the men as they enter in single file, as evidence of the raid which he could share with the press or the courts. The men are clearly unhappy about this and debate among themselves whether to confiscate his phone.

  He can see Saafi peering around the corner and he shakes his head at her, wanting her to stay put. Her becoming hysterical would only make things worse. To the men he says, “Why a dawn raid with guns?”

  “Where is your mother?” Mustachioed asks. The man takes a piece of official-looking paper out of his pocket, consults it and says, “Where is Waliya Adan Ahmed?”

  Naciim considers being cocky and correcting the man’s pronunciation of his mother’s name, but tells himself that challenging an officer in uniform on how to say a Somali name will in no way help his cause; it will only make the officers angrier. Nor will it assist him or his mother if he tells the officers he has borne witness to the damage guns cause and how they destroyed the fabric of Somali society; or how naive he once was to believe he would be safe from guns the moment he arrived in Norway.

  “With all due respect, Officers, why the guns?”

  Mustachioed says, “You are wasting our time.”

  “I don’t suppose you have a warrant, do you?”

  “Let’s be quick about it,” says Mustachioed.

  The men move with speed, their guns raised.

  “Wait,” says Naciim, and when they turn to face him, ready to listen, he aims his camera in the general direction of the officers and snaps away at them in a photographically organized manner. Then before any of them speak, he says, “Are you taking liberties you wouldn’t take with native Norwegians, because we are black and Muslim?”

  A door opening startles the men into adopting crouched positions, their guns at full cock and their fingers on the triggers. Waliya emerges, dressed in all-enveloping body tent, and looks around and asks Naciim in Somali, “Have these men come for me?”

  Mustachioed tells his men to stand down.

  “Yes, they’re here for you, Mum,” he says.

  “Then I had better go with them, hadn’t I?” she says.

  Mustachioed asks Naciim, “What is she saying?”

  “She’s ex
pecting you and is willing to come along with you,” says Naciim.

  Naciim is disturbed, because he can’t work out how she knew they were coming or what they have said, when she does not understand Norwegian. Did someone ring to alert her to the raid and advise her to go with them without any fuss?

  “Waa ika ee nawada,” she says to Mustachioed.

  Mustachioed is dumbfounded at being addressed in a language he is unfamiliar with. The man asks Naciim, “What did she say?”

  “She is ready to go with you.”

  Two of the armed men flank Waliya, ready to shepherd her out of the apartment, with the others forming a secure ring around her. Naciim takes several more snapshots for his records.

  She tells him to alert Arla as to what has happened.

  “Do you know where they are taking you?”

  “She’ll know someone who may.”

  The men surrounding her are impatient and one of them uses the butt of his gun to push her from behind, loudly instructing her to move with speed.

  Waliya angrily tells the man in Somali not to touch her with the butt of his gun, “Or else!”

  “What did she say?” Mustachioed asks Naciim again.

  Naciim translates what his mother has said into Norwegian. After a brief pause, Mustachioed tells his men to go easy on her and let her finish talking to her son.

  “You have Arla’s phone number, don’t you? Call her and let her know what’s happened.”

  “I will. Keep well, Mum.”

  “Promise to pray for me.”

  Unafraid, she turns around and opens her arms to embrace Naciim. Again, Mustachioed gestures to his men to let her be.

  As soon as the uniformed men are gone, Naciim tells Saafi that there is no more danger and she can come out. But she is quivering involuntarily and so he wraps himself around her in an effort to comfort her. “Trust me. Everything will be all right.”

  Then he tells her to go and shower, because he will make them both breakfast. When she joins him in the kitchen, her omelet ready, she asks, “Do you think it is safe for me to go to work?”