“So?” I challenged.
She appeared dazed. Could it be because she could not recall telling me herself that when she first encountered my undiluted stare she thought that “I had made myself and had been my own creation!’”? There may have been other reasons. But she stared at me as though the world had shrunk to the ground beneath her weighty body and as though any memory of her would disappear with it too and she would die. Anyway, she was silent for a long, long, time. However, this silence was different from the previous silences in that she appeared frightened, afraid of my stare. And so she pulled at her dress, nervous.
I said, “Death takes many forms in my head. Generally, it is donned all in white, robed in an Archangel’s garment into whose many-pocketed garment is dropped the day’s harvest of souls. I wonder if my mother and father’s souls ended up in the same pocket, just like a beloved wife is buried in the same tomb as her husband or a child its mother if they all die together. I wonder if I would have a soul to speak of had I died at birth—I instead of my mother.”
Flabbergasted, she could only stare at me. And I continued: “I was ready to be born but it appears my mother was ready to die. Maybe I would have died if she hadn’t. And I suspect it wouldn’t be I telling this story, I suspect, as a matter of fact, the story wouldn’t be the same, not the subject matter. My death wouldn’t have earned me an obituary and my life wouldn’t have engaged anybody’s time and energy. You see, death ends all talk. From then on, death rules. Or, if you please, God.”
Again, she stared at me in disbelief. She asked after the appropriate pause: “How old are you, Askar?”
I replied, “I am seven.”
“I might as well ask myself if Satan is older,” she said.
“I am sorry?”
“Oh, never mind,” she said.
Before long, she was herself again, mothering me, requesting that I bow down and subject my clothes for inspection, reminding me at one and the same time that I was very young, capable of “accidents”, unforeseen things, and that put her in control of the situation again and she was saying that I should change my clothes, etc., etc., etc. But: woe to me if she were in season. Then—well, that’s another story.
V
The sight of blood didn’t repel or frighten me. That of water, however small or large its body, attracted me. Water comforted me and I fell silent when in it, as though in reverence to its god. I splashed in it so that its crystals, clear as silver and just as lovely, flew up in the air, winged, like my imagination, until these balls of magic beauty were recalled back to the body from whence they had sprung. I could never determine my relationship with water. Not until I met my mother’s brother, who told me that water had the same sort of satanic fascination for my mother, Aria. She had endangered her own life so many times that in the end, he decided to teach her to swim. She was the only woman who knew how to swim, it being uncommon in Somalia for women to learn. Water, she had explained to him, gave her the mobility and space her fantasies required, and she used to begrudge the water in the ocean its moods of calm or rage, the water in the river the determination to return “home” in vaporous form or end in the bigger ocean,
I asked myself often if this is what I remember of my foetal existence—water. It was total bliss, I said to Uncle Hilaal one day He was happy to hear that. He said—and I am not certain if he was quoting from something he read—that the first water is indubitably the best, it is heavenly bliss. There is no other expression for such a feeling.
So, in depthless water, my beginning. It was water ushered me into where I am, water that made me the human that I am, water that gave me foetal warmth—and a great deal more. Water was my mirror and I watched my reflections in it, reflections at which I smiled and which grew waves—waves dark as shadows—when I dipped my hand in. I was fond of drinking from the very spot across which my shadow fell. The water never tasted as good, in my cupped hands, from any other place.
In depthless water, too, it was I saw my future. I had it read by Misra who was exceptionally gifted in this sort of line — reading one’s future in the waves of water or in the quiver of meat or in a pool of blood. Water in a container or blood in another, the blood of a slaughtered beast, lying untouched where it had fallen and remaining there until it was empty of running, i.e. living, blood. But was it for religious or health sentiments that this was done? Misra didn’t know. Anyway, she knew how to read the future in the quiver of meat. The intestines, the fats, the entrails — every piece or slice of meat was, to her, like a palm to a fortune-teller and she read it. I was certain no other child had as much fun as I. Definitely not any of Uncle Qorrax’s children. They were beaten in the morning, in the afternoon or in the evenings by their tyrannical father, by Aw-Adan who was their (and later became my) teacher, or their mothers or a visiting relation. Not I. I was Misra’s property.
And Misra would bathe me. She oiled my body with care. I crouched in the baafi my eyes half-closed, in concentration and anxiety, waiting for the water to descend from a great height. I would shake, I would shiver, as though the cold water was hot and had burnt me—my arms moving in all directions as though they might take off in flight. A second and a third scooping of the water would ensure that my body was sufficiently wet for her to soap it. At times, when standing, I held on to her shoulders, lest I fell forward. My eyes remained closed, however, until I heard her say that I could open them. It was she who determined when this was to occur. As part of the ritual, she insisted that I blow my nose. For this purpose she would place her open left palm directly under my chin and with her right hand’s index finger and thumb squeezing the nose as I exhaled. Now where was I given these baths? Right inside our mud hut; or in the yard, if it was day, under the tree planted the very day I was born. That she had hers in the privacy of a closed door and all by herself was something I associated with her being an adult. Children had no cawra, whether boys or girls, they could walk about naked, displaying their uff until they became grown up. Anyway, after the bath, another joy.
She would oil my body a second time—tickling me as she did so, touching my friend squeezing it. She made me laugh, made me happy. Then she prepared a meal for the two of us to eat, and when I was good, as a treat, she boiled milk and sugared it for me and I drank it warm. Playfully, I refused to lick away my moustache of milk and she would tease me and we would have great fun, laughing, chasing each other under the bed or behind it. Suddenly, her voice changed. No more drinking of water lest I wet the bed which she and I shared. “What have you in your bladder?” and she would tickle me. “Why does it leak?” And the nipping, as she pinched my uff, would make me laugh.
Water: I associate with joy; blood: not so much with pain as with lost tempers and beatings. But I associate something else with blood—future as read by Misra. Once I even made a pun—my future is in my blood. The funny thing was Uncle Qorrax misunderstood it as meaning that my destiny was the destiny of the family of which he was head. Well, I didn’t correct him. We had a laugh, Misra and I. The poor man did not know that she had read my future in blood.
As for water. Have you ever watched a storm of rain? Imagine this: every drop of rain is escorted by an angel who keeps it company until it touches the earth, the angels who make certain that seasons change for the better when it rains, that people prosper, the dry brown grass turns green, dust into mud—and human beings pray in thankful offerings, slaughtering beasts for their carnivorous tables—and Misra is thus enabled to tell a future—which is past.
For Misra, and therefore for me too, everything had a past, a present, and a future. The earth had its history, the sun its life, the moon its pattern of behaviour. Blood. Sand. Dry leaves, dry twigs. Papers, yellow with age and roaming the open spaces, riding the dust and the wind — everything told of a future. One had to know to read it. Or so said Misra.
And stones had faces, spiders souls, serpents ideas, lizards intelligence. Human beings are not the only living and thinking beings. Rivers have memor
ies, she said. They remember where they’ve come from, they have allegiance to the people in whose country they rise. The wind recalls whom it has met in its journeys across the vast deserts, it exchanges greetings with some, turning an unhearing ear to the salutations reaching it from others. A reed possesses a mind of its own and holds steadfastly to this, even if, at times, the wind makes it go dizzy, lose its head and balance as it somersaults over rocks, sandbanks, etc. The earth draws strength from the sky, the sky from the earth — and the living from the dead. The history of the earth can be read in its eclipses, that of the sun from its being partially or completely obscured by the shadow of another body — the earth or the moon.
I continue, since I have heard her recite the “Ode to Nature” so many times: a child is to its mother what the sun is to the moon; what the heavens are to earth. Yes, Fm quoting her. The mother is what the moon is to the sun; what the earth to the heavens. A mother receiving little, giving a great deal. It makes a mother take delight in the giving and the child (or man) in the receiving. The shock is greater when one learns one must give—not always receive. A shock so great, it is like falling suddenly and unexpectedly from a great height, onto the lap of death. Amen! The living draw strength from the dead, don’t they? And those who are asleep receive sustenance from those who are awake. Amen! And remember—the Prophet has said that men are asleep. It’s only at their death that they are awoken. Amen!
VI
She looked like a corpse when asleep — motionless, with her hands folded together across her chest, her eyes closed and hardly a snort, or even a sound, issuing from her nostrils. But I told myself she needn’t have worried, when all others die, she won’t, I would say to myself. So long as I lived, she would too. Either in me, or she would live a life independent from mine. And I would watch her stir, then rise, as though from the dead, every morning, after I had been awake for hours. She would dust her dress and walk away — as if she had woken from the dead, from her own grave. Every morning, the same thing. At times, she would take a nap in the afternoon. And Aw-Adan would come and he would pull up a chair by her head, and sitting quietly, would read a selection of suras from the Koran, as though she were dead and he were reading a devotion or two over her. If she didn’t look like a corpse, I would turn her into one, I said to her one day
“But why?” she asked, disturbed.
“Or I would kill you. So you would be a corpse like my mother.”
“Kill me? Why? But what have I done?”
I found it extremely difficult to explain myself. Of course, I wasn’t going to “kill her” because I had hated her, far from it, far from it. What I meant was, that only in death could she and I be united—only in death, her death, could she and I be related, only then would I somehow feel as though we were a mother and her son. And then, and only then, would I find myself, alone and existing and real—yes, an individual with needs of his own—no longer an extension of a maternal hand whose touch quietened the childish cry in one.
And then I asked, “Is it possible that death took me for my mother, is it, Misra? Please answer me honestly. For this is something I ask myself often and I don’t know what to think or say.”
She shook her head and said she didn’t think death would mistake one person for another. It was all to do with whether one’s time in this world was up and in any case, she went on, it is only under exceptional circumstances that a person’s lifetime in this world is extended. And she told me the story of the man to whom an angel appeared and said that he, the man, was to die in a year to the day, having had his time which had been extended in view of the good things he had been doing. Although grateful, the man admitted that one year wasn’t probably enough for him to finish all the things he had begun and besides, what is a year but three-hundred-and-sixty-five days and what is life but these incalculable mysteries, mysteries that remain unrevealed to one, mysteries that descend on one like grains of sand from the sky I would've preferred it, said the man to the angel, had you not come to tell me when death would call on me—whether in an hour, a day, say, or even a year. The angel said he had been given instructions to do so and he left the man saying no more. For three-hundred-and-sixty-five days and nights, the man spent every second of his life in this world praying and he spent every cent he had on some charitable cause or other and he did not sin either in thought or deed. A year later to the day, the angel, robed all in white, appeared before the man, and all he said was, “You’ve been dead for a year. If one were to extend your life in this world by another year, one wonders if you will live. Why pray day and night? Why spend every cent you have on charities for the needy? Do you think God created you only to pray? Live. Live, we recommend. Live like a human.” And the angel left the man in similar agony. The man lived for a year. He overate, he gave not a cent to godly causes, but prayed enough so as to placate his own conscience. When next the angel called on him, the man was prepared to receive the news of his death for he was still in pain, burdened with the knowledge that he would die in less than a year. The angel, it came to pass, turned up two years later and his only comment was that the man had the making of a human who sinned and knew he had. That man, or so the stories tell us, lived to be a hundred-and-fifteen years before another angel knocked on his door.
“But what was exceptional in the man’s life?” I said.
“He was like every other human being, I think. And death could Ve mistaken him for another person. He was weak and didn’t know the meaning of life, didn’t know why God created him,” she said. “Like most of us.”
It didn’t make much sense to me and I wondered if Aw-Adan had told her a story whose details she had half-forgotten. I asked her, after a long pause, if this was so.
As usual, she was unwilling to admit there were gaps in the story she had told me. So she changed the subject. She said that we could play hide-and-seek until I fell asleep.
She hid; I sought her out.
VII
Did I, in the act of looking, bring into being a world in which there existed not only Misra but many other persons as well? Did I, as a result of this my stare, bring into existence a life of memories in which I am not the rememberer but the remembered? I—who did surrender myself wholly to Misra and her world; I—who existed in a look I myself couldn’t have seen or known of; I—who had lived in a universe dark as a photographer’s room, a universe developing into identifiable beings, some in duplicate, others in as many copies as one wanted. A look? Or a touch?
For me, life began in her hands and it was in her touch that I began to exist. Not in the savage stare which was so primitive it penetrated to the depth of her guilt, a savage stare which stirred in her soul a selfless desire to give and give and give and therefore be, exist only in the giving. Is this why I touched her whenever the chance presented itself to me? And is this why her physical absence upset me greatly when I was tiny—because I couldn’t reprint, on the screen of my undeveloped memory, my image of her in as many copies as I wanted? Anyway, my life was in her hands and she could do what she wanted with it and she did very well by it. Yes, by all accounts, she satisfied my uncles and aunts and other relations and was able to obtain their approval—although there were secrets between her and myself, secrets to which no other person had access. These secrets comprised things we did together, she and I; they consisted of games we played in our room when darkness fell and the silence of night engulfed all and everything and we went under the bedcovers and she told me stories or taught me things she wasn’t supposed to. These secrets included the fact that I knew everything she did. For example, one of my uncles used to come and knock on the small window of our room after midnight and Misra would get out of bed and wash and prepare and wait for a second knock. At times she would open the door and he would enter and make love to her on the floor or she would follow him to another place. Often, I pretended as if I were asleep. But at times I would cry so violently I would spoil the night for them, she would get back into bed with me and would cal
m me down, hold me between her breasts and would whisper something in a serious tone—either, “I hope you’ll learn to be on your own like all other children of your age”; or, her eyes misted with tears of anguish, she would say, “I will kill you unless you behave yourself. I’ll strangle you—so as to live my own life.” Then she would place her index and middle fingers on her closed eyes and the fingers would rest there, as though they were the holes of a flute. And she would continue: “I will kill you or I will kill myself.” I would cry more furiously and would wet myself in the enraged frenzy of a pervasive self-expression, and her tears would drip on me. She would lift me up, disregarding the mess of my moisture and the fact that she was dressed in her most elegant dress, and she would rock me to silence. She would place me within her reach, either on the floor or on a stool. If she moved away from me, if her hand didn’t lay on me, she knew I would burst into another convulsive cry and would also vomit or cough or do both. After a long bath, I would sit up and, as though nothing had occurred, would play And she would hide and I would look out for her in the dark or lighted sections of the room. When neighbours or relations who had overheard my tumultuous cries the previous night asked after me the following morning, Misra, generous and loving, would not speak of the inconveniences I had caused her, nor would she speak of the visitor who had called after midnight. We would look at each other and share a grin or a smile, depending on our respective moods. But neither would talk of our common secret. When nervous, she would rise from where she had been sitting and look away. I would smile to myself triumphantly, knowing that I had her whole life in the power of my mouth and I could do what I wanted with it.
I'll admit that many things are confused in my memory. My head, I feel sometimes, will explode with the intensity of the anecdotes I remember — events which in all likelihood didn’t take place, not, at any rate, as I remember them. One thing which I definitely recall, with the clarity of a daylight occurrence, is how “responsible” Misra felt regarding me, my body and my thoughts. She was responsible for me in the same way as the dweller of a certain place takes upon himself or herself most things that happen in it, so much so that water shortages or power-cuts and similar anomalies are explained away as personal shortcomings. If I had a cold, if my stomach ran or if I spoke unduly rudely to anyone, Misra explained — she justified or interceded for me or she would say that she would take the beating on herself. If taken ill, she would explain why my constitution had weakened or why I wasn’t as healthy and strong as I used to be. But when not in public, she would complain to me directly or grumble or mumble, within my hearing, as though she were talking to herself. “It is in your element to be mean,’ she would accuse me. “Why, you know I am a foreigner here and that if you fall ill, your people will say it is because I haven’t taken good care of your food. You also know that, when you do well, the credit is not mine but your people’s, that is your [Somali] nation whose identity I do not share. Why must you make my life a misery?”
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