Maps

by Nuruddin Farah

  But Qorrax called at yours when he chose, preferably when you began breathing shallowly through your nose, almost asleep. He would wait until your dream had taken you to a watery destinatio —where it was moist, green and all your own—your Eden. Then he would come into bed with Misra.

  Oh, how you hated him!

  V

  On the other hand, you loved Uncle Hilaal and his wife, Salaado, directly you met them. The flow of their warmth was comforting — sweet as spring water. And everything either of them did or said, once you gave it a thought, appeared as necessary as the blood of life. You loved Hilaal and Salaado, you loved the sea and you loved Mogadiscio.

  You began writing letters to Misra a few months after your arrival in Mogadiscio. But you never finished writing even one single letter, suspecting, rightly, that she wouldn’t be able to read Somali although she spoke it well enough. You were most distressed when you leamt that there never was a mail service through the official channels between Somalia and Ethiopia. Uncle Hilaal told you that letters had to be sent to other destinations, preferably via a European rechannelling system, like letters between a person living in apartheid South Africa and another in black Africa or a correspondence between one person residing in Syria and the other in Israel. So, apart from the wall of separation the Somali orthography raised between the two of you, there was also the official Ethiopian line of thinking, which was inimical to any communication taking place between Somalis living on either side of the de facto border between Ethiopia and Somalia. There were, indeed, rumours to the effect that a number of people suspected of holding Somali sympathies had been summarily executed, some were said to be still in jails serving sentences a military tribunal passed on them. You couldn’t vouch for the truth of all that you heard, but you heard reports in which a man entered the Ogaden on foot, one day, and was apprehended. In his holdall, they found letters said to have been written by one member of the Western Somali Liberation Front to another. The man was sentenced to death, there being no question In the mind of the tribunal that he was a saboteur.

  You began most of your letters with the standard greetings and then penned something like this: “Perhaps you don’t remember me any more and perhaps you do. But I am the Askar who, for years, was strapped to your body, was almost one with it. I am sorry I’ve been beastly and haven’t written … but!” And so on and so forth. In them, you spoke lovingly of Hilaal and Salaado, describing them as kind-hearted, enlightened and highly educated. However, you were sad, you said, because they didn’t have “a festivity of goings-on” as in Uncle Qorrax’s compound, where there were many people, relatives and others, who came, who called and were entertained and where one felt one was a member of a community “Here,” you went on in one of those unposted and unfinished letters, “it appears as though it were a great virtue to be self-sufficient—and Uncle Hilaal and Salaado are. And I am the child they’ve been awaiting all these years. I am a godsend to them, although I am sure this isn’t the right way of putting it since they both strike one, at first, as not being at all religious. They lavish their love on me. And this matters greatly to me.”

  And you boasted of your material acquisitions. For example, a watch “that circulates with my blood, one that stops if I don’t wear it somewhere on my person”. And a radio which “is on all day and night, entertaining us with the latest songs”. Not to forget the room “that is all mine and on whose walls I have mirrors and maps, the one to reflect my visage, showing me whether or not I’ve grown a beard after so many disastrous beginnings including, do you remember? my saying that if Karin’s menopausal hair-on-the-chin was ‘manlier’ than mine then it was high time I did something about it; the other, i.e. the maps which give me the distance in scales of kilometrage—the distance that is between you and me. Which is to say that we are a million minutes apart, your ‘anatomy’ and mine”. Again, you boasted of the learning you acquired and spoke commendably of Cusmaan, whom Hilaal and Salaado had engaged as your tutor. You showed off by asking Misra if she knew how far the sun was from the earth.

  You were happy. You missed Misra. Evidently. Or, to put it differently, you missed her body’s warmth and the odour of her sweat—which was natural. Salaado was a cosmopolitan woman, she smelt of perfumes and her clothes smelt of mothballs, her nails of varnish, her shoes of polish. It was Hilaal who reminded you of Misra—his was the natural body odour. And he was fatter and liked to make bodily contact, just like Misra!

  There was one essential fact which you never mentioned, not even in those unposted, unfinished letters—that Hilaal cooked all the meals, and Salaado drove their only car and everything was in her name, bank accounts, land deeds, literally everything. He drove, yes, but only when necessary And she was a terrible cook. And neither did you translate into Somali one of Uncle Hilaal’s favourite phrases: “Sooner or later, sex”.

  They were wonderful: calm when you were caught in a storm of your own making; comforting whenever you were in some form of discomfort; providing space when that was what you needed desperately; trusting of you and of one another and of your need of each other, giving, forgiving and loving all the time. You were your own person and your life was your own and you could do with it what you pleased. And they? They were at your service, they were there to help you if it was their assistance you sought; they were there to let you go if that was what you wished. For example, there was that time in Hargeisa, where Salaado and you were holidaying—you had earned a vacation by doing well in your eighth-grade examination—when Hilaal sent you a letter you've preserved till this day. Here is the body of the letter:

  My dearest Askar,

  I am indeed disturbed by your behaviour, disturbed and bothered by what Salaado refers to as your most depressive state of mind to date. And what do you mean by saying that you haven't become “a man" so you can sit “in a Mogadiscio of comforts, eat a mountainful of spaghetti while my peers in the Ogaden starve to death or shed their blood in order to liberate it from Ethiopian hands”? Do I also understand that you wish to straighten out "this question about my own birth"?

  Now, first point first. A man, indeed. Are you “a man”? One day, I would like you to define what or who is a “man”. Can one describe oneself as a man when one cannot make a viable contribution to the struggle of ones' people; when one is not as educated and as aware of the world's politics as ones enemy is; when one is not yet fifteen; when all the evidence of one's being a man comprises of one's height and a few hairs grown on the chin? Who will you kill, your enemy or yourself? And what's wrong with eating well and not being a refugee, which you might have been if you weren't my sister, Arla's, son and if Salaado and I weren't doing well financially. And pray don't talk ill of the UNHCR people, whether in Geneva, Mogadiscio or here, in this, or any other continent: they're not statisticians obsessed with abstracted numbers and charts of starvation and malnutrition. Of course, they have to ascertain how many refugees there are and how much money they can raise and how many calories an African child can cope with. It is the tone I don’t like, eating “a mountainful of spaghetti”, etc. Indeed! Askar, one must be grateful for the little mercies in life. One must be thankful to the dedicated souls, serving in these camps under very hard conditions (for them), while they wait for a donor to donate the food and medicines—making sure (and this is very, very difficult) that the local mafia doesn’t misappropriate them.

  I confess, it pains me to remember the number of times you, Salaado and I have spoken about and analysed the seeds of your sense of “guilt”. Salaado ‘s telegraphic message suggests it to be as bad as the days following the tragic weekend when, overnight and in a coup de grâce, the Ogaden was wrung out of Somali hands and “returned” to Ethiopia’s claw-hammer. Now what’s this that I hear, that you were salvaged from the corpse of your mother? Is there anyone who can substantiate that with some evidence? Your mother lived long enough to have scribbled something in her journal. That means that she died after you were born, especially if we take in
to account Misra’s statement which agrees with this claim of mine.

  To think, at your age, when you’re in Hargeisa for a holidaying trip, that your thoughts are still obsessed with some obscure facts relating to your birth. This disturbs Salaado—it perturbs me. Salaado tells me that you want to return to Kallafo in order to have this question answered once and for all. That is not the same thing as joining the Western Somali Liberation Front, I take it? But Salaado is under the impression that for you, the two are one and the same thing. Now what do you want to do? Of course, you can do both and we have no objection to your deciding to return to the Ogaden as a recruited member of the Front (which we all support) and when there, do your research into your beginnings. You tell us what you want and well give you our opinion.

  Forgive me, but I've never held the view—nor has Salaado—that, since there are many able-bodied men and women in the Ogaden who can shoot a gun, kill an “Amxaar” in a scuffle and, if need be, confront the lion in the den, a youngster like you mustn’t go. No. “Somebody” must go. But who is this “somebody”? If every father, mother, relation said, “No, not my son, let someone else join the Front”, then you know where we’ll end up? The view Salaado and I hold, is that since you’ll prove to be excellent material as a researcher, as a writer of articles and as one who can impart enlightened opinion about the cause, why not “eat mountainfuls of spaghetti while others die” and why not, when doing so, complete your education.

  Should you insist that you wish to re-enter the Ogaden without touching Mogadiscio, then I am afraid that neither Salaado nor I can do anything about it. All we can suggest that we offer is help. But I plead to you not to depart without at least letting Salaado know. If you inform me by return post that you’re definitely leaving, then I’ll make arrangements for more money to be transferred to Hargeisa, care of a bank.

  If we’re to believe that you “stared” at Misra when she found you and Arla, my sister, then you were at least a day old. For sight, my dear Askar, is a door which does not open instantly in the newly born. What I mean is, that it takes longer than a few minutes for a baby just bom to develop the knack to look, let alone “stare". Be that as it is. But the fact that it shrouds your beginnings in mysteries preponderant as the babies born in the epic traditions of Africa, Europe and Asia—this fact does interest me greatly. Did you sprout like a plant out of the earth? Were you born in nine months, in three or seven?

  In other words, do you share your temperament with the likes of Sunjata or Mwendo, both being characters in Africa's epic traditions? For example, it is said that Sunjata was an adult when he was three. Mwendo, in the traditions told about him, is said to have chosen to be delivered, not through the womb, but through a middle finger. There are other epic children who took a day to be conceived and born and yet others required a hundred and fifty years to be bom at all Now why did this “epic child” wait for a hundred and fifty years? Because he made the unusual (I almost said, rational) request not to use as his exit (or was it his entrance) the very organ which his mother employed as her urinary passage. Another feature common among epic children is that they are all born bearing arms. And you, Askar, you’re armed by name, aren’t you?

  Again, this is nothing unique to epic traditions of peoples. The world's religions produce “miracle” children. Can you imagine an Adam, a grown man, standing naked, with leaves of innocence covering his uff, when God pulls at his ribs and says to him, “I am sorry but it won’t take a second, I assure you, and it won’t give you any pain either. Now look. Here. A woman, an Eve, created from one of your ribs”? I am sure you’ve heard of heroes given birth to by mountains or rivers or fishes or for that matter other animals. It seems to me that these myths make the same point again and again: that the “person” thus born contains within him or her a characteristic peculiar to gods. Well Where do we go from here?

  All is doubt.

  Are you or are you not an “epic” child of the modern times? Do we know what the weather was like the moment you were born? Yes, we do. Your mother, in her scrawls, tells us that the sky was dark with clouds and that a heavy storm broke on her head as she fainted with the pains of labour and the heavens brightened with those thunderous downpours. But you didn‘t take shorter than a month to be conceived and bom, or seven hundred years. And there was no eclipse of the moon or the sun. I've read and reread your mothe' s journal for clues. I am afraid it appears that you completed your nine months.

  Please think things over. And please do not do anything rash. We will miss you greatly if you go—but we understand. Rest assured that we’ll not stand in your way if you wish to return to your beginnings.

  Much, much love.

  Yours ever,

  Uncle Hilaal

  CHAPTER TWO

  I

  Misra 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 l
arge 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”.