Maps

by Nuruddin Farah

  What survived my real mother was “memory”, not I. People were, in a general sense, kinder and more generous to me, because my parents had died and I was an orphan. People said kind things about my parents, while they gave their counsel, gratis of course, to Misra, telling her how best to take care of me and how best to raise me, so I would be a monument of remembrance to them. Some looked disfavourably upon my calling Misra “Mother” and took the first opportunity to correct that. Others didn’t bother and argued that in time I would know she wasn’t my mother. As I grew older and met more and more of these people, I decided I would refrain from calling Misra anything until we were in the privacy of our room, so she could address me, or I her, however each liked. It was during this period that I asked Misra if she remembered anything about her own childhood. She answered that the only thing she could recall was that she wasn’t allowed any of the things she wanted to do and she longed to grow old enough so she could be herself. I asked, “As a child you weren’t yourself, do you mean?”

  She said, “Childhood may best be described as a condition of becoming someone else when with adults, and yourself when alone or with other children; it is difficult getting used to either. I mean, it is difficult getting used to the idea that, although you've been given clothes bought specifically for you, the choice when and why to wear them or whether you would remain without them is not your own.”

  I remember, I was six then. And I remember thinking about “nakedness”. In those days, whenever I saw someone naked, I could think of two things — beds and baths. One day I saw Misra and Aw-Adan naked. They were near a bed all right, but they were not in it, nor were they having their baths. I wondered if the choice to remain undressed could be an adult’s, too. A child, this I knew for certain, was allowed to roam about in the house or even in the street, totally unclothed. Although “who” the child was mattered a great deal too. If you were the child of one of those people who couldn’t afford to buy clothes for themselves, let alone for their children—well, one could understand and sympathize, couldn’t one? With this, and many other related and unrelated thoughts in my mind, I formulated a question in my head, a question which, in a roundabout way, had something to do with “nakedness” and which, in so far as I was concerned, directly had to do with my seeing Aw-Adan, the priest, and Misra, naked, although then they weren’t in bed but near it. I asked Misra what their “relationship” was.

  To Misra, the question, “What’s this person’s relationship to me?” meant nothing more and nothing less than, “Who is this person?”—which in turn meant, “Is he an uncle or an aunt or a cousin?” To her, the fabric of Somali society was basically incestuous and you had a glimpse into the mind of a Somali if you knew to whom he or she was related by blood or by marriage. Neither she nor Aw-Adan was born Somali and I suspect she knew that I had been aware of that and therefore she must have sensed that no amount of tapestrying her woven story with patterns of her own inventions would have convinced me as the truth might have—life’s most excellent embroidery. She smiled sweetly, silently and looked away as though looking for an answer. She might have been inventing a genealogical tree whose branches and roots supplied a pedigree of the appropriate answers to my question. But I doubted very much if she was the type of woman who could lose herself in the eternity of a search for who she was—for she knew who she was.

  When I insisted she respond to my question, she said, simply and plainly, as though she were speaking the words for the first time ever, “Aw-Adan? He is a man.”

  For a moment or two, she sought and sat under the cool shade of the generic term “The Tree of Man” — and smiled triumphantly. I was sure she was under the wrong impression that she had dealt with my question satisfactorily. Then I asked, “What about Uncle Qorrax? Is he a man too?”

  She was most singularly exposed, like an isolated eucalyptus tree a lightning had struck. She sat motionless, speechless, looking away from me, embarrassed.

  II

  I didn’t like Uncle Qorrax. It was no secret I didn’t like him. I was barely three days old when I made that abundantly clear to everybody, including himself. The story is told how he arranged to make a formal call on his nephew—that is me—how he had asked that I be washed with a scented soap which he had provided for that very purpose, how he had sent ahead of himself his youngest wife so she would help Misra with the arrangements and be present when he was introduced to me.

  He came dressed in his best—a silk sarong he hadn’t worn until that day, a most colourful cimaama to go with it and a Baravaan hat. Also, he wore his patent-leather shoes and his favourite socks. He left his compound predicting that I would like him. He added, “I am determined to make him like me”. He said so to Shahrawello. I doubt it if she told him how ludicrous he looked, calling on his nephew not even three days old, dressed as though he were visiting a king. But what good would her speaking her mind have done her or anyone else? She stood aside, letting him go past her, and chuckled to herself as he took his long strides. After he had gone, I believe there was an improvised gathering and each of them commented on how absurd this all was, some laughed until their ribs ached. Anyway, Shahrawello is reported to have said that a man is not his clothes but that “a child inherits its mother’s hates and loves”. And she bet her life, if anyone was willing to bet a coin of the smallest denomination, that the young one wouldn’t like his uncle.

  I was asleep when he entered. He was angry at Misra, accusing her of disobedience, scolding her for not having prepared me for the occasion. And he made unnecessary noises so I would wake up. I wouldn’t. Not until Misra went out of the room to cry outside. I heard her crying and I awoke. I looked this and that way No Misra. And who was this—a man awkwardly dressed with top hat and all, ugly, thin and tall? What’s more, I was lying on my back, helpless, like a beetle on its spine, and my hands, however many times I raised them, returned to me empty—empty of Misra and full of vacant air. Then I heard Uncle’s ugly voice, thin and yet sharp, piercing, cutting me in two halves. And I cried a furious cry, so heinous that he froze where he was, frightened at the thought that I might harm myself. When he came nearer me, I cried louder and with vengeance and no one could silence me until Misra returned. Once she was back in the room, you could sense that my cry wasn’t as fierce as it had been. All she had to do was to lay a finger on any part of my body and I fell quiet. But my body remained nervous and there was something agitated in the atmosphere until Uncle Qorrax was out of the room. I began to relax when I could no longer hear his ugly voice.

  That I burst into tears immediately when he walked into the room I had been in— this entered the lore of the traditions told in my uncle’s compound. Obviously, it made him very uneasy. But there was little he could do to me, or about me. His position as a respected member of the community dictated that he treat me with apparent kindness, and that he provide for me, someone else to take my mother’s place. Misra, until then, was not a bona fide member of the compound. It appears she became one, especially, when I chose her — chose her in preference to all the other women who had been tried on me, one after the other, a dozen or so women into whose open arms I was dropped. I cried with vigour whenever Misra wasn’t there. In the end, the community of relations approved of my choice. But not my uncle. Not until a year later.

  To reduce the tension, my uncle decided to earmark a fenced mud hut with its separate entrance for our own use. That way, he wouldn’t encounter us when going into or out of his compound, of which he was the unchallenged master. One could tell if he was or wasn’t there—when he was there, we wouldn’t hear anything except his terrible voice, giving instructions to or shouting at somebody. Often, we would also hear the help-help cry of a wife or a child being beaten. When he wasn’t there, the compound and its residents wore an air of festivity and women and children exchanged gossip and wicked jokes about him, or men like him, and neighbours visited and were entertained. But we were excluded from the joys and sadnesses of the compound. We h
ad our life to lead and a compound which was all our own, Misra and I. We lived the way we saw fit. At least, until nightfall And then Uncle came.

  He came after nightfall and made his claims on Misra. It was one thing to make a political (that is public) statement by being kind to her and myself, it was another to give something for nothing. He didn’t confound issues—he would hire another woman in her place and dispense with her services unless she offered herself to him. I learnt later that she did. She said it was so she would be allowed to be with me. Misra suffered the humiliation of sleeping with him so she could be with me. I don’t know what I might have said if I had known. Things do look different from this height (now I am a grown-up and a man myself!), from this distance; besides, one tends to indulge oneself until the end of one’s days, talking until daylight, about the possible alternatives and compromises of a complicated situation such as this. But were there other avenues, other alternatives, other possible compromises that she could’ve struck with Uncle Qorrax?

  She thought Aw-Adan might have become one healthy alternative—if I had liked him. But I didn’t. Looking back on it now, I think the reasons why I disliked Aw-Adan were different—different in that Misra and he had a world of their own, a language of their own, and so when they lapsed into it or chose to dwell in the secretive universe of its nuances and expressions and gestures, I felt totally excluded. I was afraid they would either take me away from the Somali-speaking world or deny me my Misra, who had been for me the end-all and the cosmos of my affections.

  It is hard to admit it, but I suppose I was a vulnerable child, much more vulnerable than anyone suspected. Aw-Adan nicknamed me “Misra’s nightingale”. I didn’t understand his meaning until years later. For a long time, I took him to mean that I sang Misra’s love-names. He didn’t mean that at all. He meant that only Misra was allowed to enter my freehold space, the freehold territory which I had acquired for myself.

  It is true that only Misra had access to the freehold kingdom of which I was the undisputed lord. And since I held Uncle Qorrax, his wives and his children in total awe and at bay, it appeared there were only Misra and Karin whose civilized company I kept. Nor did I like playing with the children of the neighbourhood when I grew up a little bigger, because they remained infantile, fighting over the ownership of toys, dolls and balls. I took pride in my being self-sufficient and came to no grief so long as I knew either Misra or Karin was in my view or earshot. At night, dreams kept me busy; during the day, if Misra was otherwise occupied with one of life’s many chores that needed attending to, I sought the companionship of my imagination. It was only when Misra was short-tempered (this happened when she was in season), or when she beat me because she was short-tempered (because she was in season)—it was only then that I knew I was an only child and an orphan. And Misra couldn’t bear the stare-of-the-orphan. And she would dispatch me off for the day to Karin’s compound — Karin who was, to me, like a grandmother: gentle as one, generous as one.

  III

  I am sure it is appropriate that I address myself to the question: was there ever any time that I remember liking Uncle Qorrax? Was there a period I remember having a soft spot for the man who paid all my expenses, the man who was my father’s brother?

  I was fond of adults” shoes, as many children are, when I was an infant, and I recall the pleasant thought of owning such good and colourfully patterned shoes as Uncle Qorrax crossing my mind. It used to give me immense happiness to touch them whenever I crawled near them. It used to make me sad when I was not allowed to put them in my mouth or lick them. But when the phase of loving adults’ shoes was passed, I ceased going to him or being friendly with him.

  I think that the patterns of his shoes appealed to my sense of the aesthetic, since their designs reminded me of some of the calligraphic images I had seen painted on doors to the palaces my dreams had taken me to but which I had never entered. After all, The Arabian Nightswere full of such gates with such motifs and such colourful designs. The truth was that I admired them even when I was a little older and loved their bright colours. Although, when he asked me once what my favourite colour was, I surprised him by saying that I preferred earthen to neon — knowing full well what that meant. This decided for him—as a present for the Ciid festivities, he didn’t buy for me a pair of shoes with bright colours and patterns as he had intended—instead, he got me maps. And he called to deliver them in broad daylight. He came dressed as though in mourning. Misra inquired if somebody had died. He was in a foul mood. He said, “Someone will die, somebody will.”

  Misra looked unhappy that day and the following. If only she paid attention to my comments that someone always dies, that someone is born when another dies and that we are affected by death or birth if we know, are close to, or love the persons concerned.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” she said.

  I said, “Of death.”

  IV

  Death-as-topic-for-discussion was taboo in our house and no one was allowed to speak of it or mention the Archangel’s name in my presence. It was of life we were to talk, the blood and vitality of life that is the essence of one’s being. Even the past, when clothed in garments of death or mourning, was a forbidden subject, for it was feared that this past might eventually lead to the names of my dead parents, to the fact that I knew next to nothing about my mother or my father.

  There were epidemics, there was a drought, and the earth lay lifeless, treeless, dead, growing nothing, causing things to decay and metal to rust — and we weren’t allowed to talk about death. Whispers. Conspiracies. With the night falling secretly and Uncle Qorrax crawling into bed with us and making love to Misra — the cycle of life and death, the circle ending where it began — the flow of menstruation, of death ascertained — and we weren’t to talk of death. Not even when Misra was helped to abort, not even when a calendar was brought into the compound and when circles in green were neatly drawn round the safe days and nights. An ovum lives for less than thirty-six hours, sperm for about twenty-four. Yes, only one, maximum two days in each cycle. And we weren’t to talk of death.

  Not until I came to Mogadiscio during the 1977 war in the Horn of Africa, not until then was the discretion about death completely disregarded and only then could “death” occur in my vocabulary in the manner it occurs in the thoughts of a spinster who’s been robbed by it. I recall saying to Uncle Hilaal, who helped me loosen up and with whom I could comfortably talk easily that “death” was to me simply a metaphor of “absence”; and God was a “presence”. My uncle’s stare was long but also difficult to interpret. He was silent for a while, then, sighing, he mumbled something which I took to be the syllables of Misra’s name.

  Mis-ra!

  Then I repeated to my uncle the story of how I asked Misra to explain what it is that happens when death visits its victims.

  “The heart stops functioning,’ she said.

  “Nothing else happens?” I inquired.

  “That is death. The heart’s stopping,” she explained.

  “And the rest of the body?”

  “It rigidifies as a result.”

  “Like … like Aw-Adan’s leg? Wooden like Aw-Adan’s leg, is that what happens? Lifeless and unbending… like Aw-Adan’s leg?”

  I had never seen Misra as angry as she was on that day. She wouldn’t speak for hours. And in the body of my fantasies there took place something interesting: I remembered how fast the third leg (the wooden leg, that is) was dropped and how fast another between his legs came to raise its head, jerkily, slowly and nervously; and how the whole place drowned in the sighing endearments of Misra who called him… yes him of all people … “my man, my man, my man”!

  Then suddenly I remembered something—a question I had meant to put to somebody, any adult, I didn’t care to whom. Misra happened to be angry, yes, but I felt she would answer it if I asked. So I did just that. “And the soul?” I said.

  Most definitely, she had forgotten what we were talking
about before she fell silent and into a dudgeon dark with rage. “What about the soul?” she said, lost in the zigzaggy mazes of bewilderment. “What about it?”

  “What happens to the soul when somebody dies?” I said.

  She was silent for a while—silent in a naked way, if I may put it thus, and she took her time gathering her ideas like an elegant robe around her, her hands busy touching and caressing her face, levelling and smoothing the bumps and the roughness her anger with me had brought about, and a thought crossed my mind (my thoughts as usual began to outrun me): what do monkeys pick when they pick at each others head? Lice? Or something else? Or nothing at all? I thought I would wait for the right moment to question her on this.

  She cleared her throat. I knew she was ready to speak I sat up, waiting. In the meanwhile, I could see her repeating to herself something in mumbles. 1 was sure she was quoting either the Koran or Aw-Adan. She said, “The soul is the stir in one, for one stirs not when dead,”

  I was disappointed. She wondered why. I told her.

  “And what do you want me to tell you?” she said, unhappy

  I was disappointed her answer was brief and had ended, in a sentence, long before I was aware she had begun. What I wanted her to do was to talk about death in as much detail as was possible for a seven-year-old like myself to understand. I needn’t have reminded her that I had encountered death before, in the look of my mother, in the rigidity of her body. I needn’t have reminded her that, in so far as she was concerned, I had made myself, that 1 was my own creation and that upon me was bestowed, by myself of course, everything other mortals wished for in their dreams.