In awe, I looked from one to the other. Misra unclasped my hand from hers and, so to speak, pushed me towards Uncle Qorrax. I didn’t know where I was being taken to and was worried I was to go alone with Uncle. He said, “You and I will go together.”
I said Misra’s name and hung it on a peg for both of them to see.
“No. Alone. You and I,” he said, and took my hand.
Like a bewildered African nation posing questions to its inefficient leadership, I kept asking, “Where are we going? Where are you taking me to?” My thoughts crossed my mind. The most pressing one was addressed to myself: will I be able to cope with this separation from Misra?
I cannot vouch for the accuracy of my memory here. Possibly I’ve invented one or two things, perhaps I have intentionally deviated from the true course of events. Although I tend to think that I am remembering in precise detail how things happened and what was said. I admit the abrupt removal from Misra’s reassuring presence was similar to being weaned—despite the fact that I don’t know what “weaning” means (I was bottle-fed or “cup-fed”. However, there was something formal, something ritualistic about the encounter which took place between Uncle Qorrax and Aw-Adan, an encounter which occurred on the periphery of the latter’s kingdom.
I was tense. I stood away from them, timid-looking, avoiding any eye-contact with Uncle Qorrax’s children, one of whom was putting out his tongue (at me) in a gesture of derision. The pupils fell silent directly they saw us. The two assistant teachers held their canes in their tight grips but grinned noddingly at Uncle Qorrax. Aw-Adan came forward. He and Uncle exchanged greetings. They both then looked at me and then at themselves. Then I was no longer afraid, because I knew that I knew something about both of them—things that neither knew about the other. This fresh sense of elation gripped me unawares and my imagination flew away with me, which is why I cannot remember if Uncle Qorrax said the following to Aw-Adan as he formally handed me over as the latter’s newest pupil at the Koranic School of which he, Aw-Adan, was head:
“I bring to you, this blessed morning, this here my brother’s only son, whose name is Askar. The young man is ready to be introduced, by no less than yourself, to the Word of God as dictated by Him to Archangel Jibriil, and finally as heard by Prophet Mohammed in the trueness of the version; the Archangel was authorized by His Almighty Young Askar is nearly five years and, although he is younger than most of your other pupils, I bring him to you nevertheless. For there is no man in the compound in which he lives and one must take boys away from the bad influence of women. Will you accept him as a pupil of yours—in this and in any other life? he said, giving him my wrist in the way a seller at an abattoir offers to a buyer the front leg of a goat that’s been paid for.
Aw-Adan said, “I accept.”
“Like all human beings given life by the Almighty,’ continued Uncle Qorrax, “Askar is part bone and part flesh. The flesh is yours and you may punish it to the extent of it letting or losing a bit of blood. Teach- him the Word, punish him if he is disobedient, show him the light which you Ve seen when he is still young. The bones are, however, ours, by which I mean the family’s—and you may not harm them unnecessarily, or hurt them or break them. The flesh on the head and the hair thereon is yours, but the fluid in the brain may become yours only in so far as you've put in it the right amount of illumined knowledge. But you may not split his head with an axe.”
Aw-Adan nodded in silence.
“Do you accept Askar as your pupil as you accepted before him my own sons of my own body and blood?’” he said to Aw-Adan.
“I do.”
“The same conditions, the same monthly pay?” he asked.
Aw-Adan said, “I do.”
My uncle then formalized the deal by shaking Aw-Adan’s hand. This done, it seemed to me, at first, that he was ready to depart. No. Instead, he went over to and looked at the slates his children had scribbled on. Satisfied and appearing impressed, Uncle Qorrax left without so much as saying anything to me.
Scarcely had I taken my bearings than I was caned by Aw-Adan. You might want to know what I did to deserve such a sound beating. “That satanic stare of yours,” he said, when I asked why he was caning me, “dim it.” Could I? Even if I wanted to?
And you say that I am vindictive?
The letter alif, because I was hit by Aw-Adan and I bit my tongue, became balif; and ba when struck again sounded like fa; whereas the letter ta, now that my mouth was a pool of blood, was turned by my tongue into sha. (I can’t explain why, but for a brief period that nobody except me remembers, I had difficulty pronouncing the letter ta, which is the third letter of the Arabic and Somali alphabets. I guessed this was rather odd, given the fact that I could accurately pronounce the letter tha, as in the English word “thorough”, and also fa. Mind you, it wasn’t because my upper, front teeth were missing or anything, no. It was as if the sound t was altogether absent from the repertoire of sounds I could make. Years later, Karin came to Mogadiscio, Karin who had fallen out with Misra. And Karin gave me a startling bit of gossipy news: that Misra’s given non-Somali name had a t in it, a t with which it ended but which she got rid of so that her name wouldn’t raise eyebrows or provoke monstrous suspicions in the heads of the Somalis amongst whom she lived. But she restored the t when she fell in love with the Ethiopian security officer. Now how about that, I had thought. A t ending Misra’s name would make it Misrat, no?) Anyway, when beaten by Aw-Adan, I could only produce an ABC of confusion. Now I had enough evidence that he hated me. I was convinced he hit me whenever he had the opportunity to, caning me ruthlessly, hitting me as one vindictive adult hits another. He was far from being a responsible teacher disciplining an errant pupil. I could see hate in his eyes, I could hear contempt in his shallow breathing as he lifted his arm as high as he could in order to strike me. I could sense that he invested ail his power and muscle into the hit. I don’t know how long it was before I made the resolution that I had reached the point of human evolution where I could seriously plan to murder. Then something became obvious to me—or rather something was revealed to me—that I could kill, at least in thought. That was how I willed Uncle Qorrax and Aw-Adan out of my way and, for whatever this is worth, declared them dead. And it was the first, but definitely not the last, time that I tasted hate in my saliva—which is to say that I tasted blood in my mouth, which is another manner of saying that I tasted someone else’s death inside of me.
There were bloodstains on my back; and lots of sores which have left memories of scars, a dozen or so of them, some as straight-backed as the letter alif in Arabic calligraphy, others with a curve as that of the letter ba, and yet others with three dots above the letter of tha. Misra applied the proper medicaments. Her position was that no child could deal with the intricacies of the Sacred Word until his body was subjected to, and made to undergo, physical punishments beyond his own imagination. No sooner had I begun cursing Aw-Adan than she put her hand on my mouth, beseeching that I unsay all the wicked things I had spoken. “Please unsay these things,” she pleaded. Of course, I did not.
How the sores ached! And I had a temperature too. My hot blood had poured into my head. I became dizzy and was certain I would fall were I to get up and walk. My eyes fell on the calendar on the wall. I counted in my head, counted over three-hundred-and-sixty-five reasons why I hated and wanted to murder Aw-Adan. I worked out in my thoughts some three-hundred-and-sixty-five ways of killing Uncle Qorrax; I named the three-hundred-and-sixty-five days in a future in which I would make this possible. I, who had murdered my mother, I said to myself. Why should it not be possible to murder a hated Aw-Adan? And why should killing Uncle Qorrax pose any difficulties?
“Now, Askar. Why can’t you collaborate?” she said, in my opinion putting the blame squarely on me. “Why don’t you simply acknowledge the fact that I taught you to read and write? Why don”t you admit that you know the alphabet backwards and forwards?”
I cried, “Ouch,” when she touched a so
re. “It hurts,” I said.
She dabbed another sore and I shouted louder. She said: “This is no lay education. This is sacred education. And children are beaten if they don”t pay their full attention to the Sacred Word. No sympathies. Learn to read the Koran, leam to copy the verses well—and you may go far. One day, who knows, you may be in a position to pray for my displaced soul.”
My saliva was tasteless and I was tongue-tied, and it was a relief because I didn’t want to say something I couldn”t unsay. But the pain, what pain! I thought, God, why did you have to create such pain? To test the man in me?
When the sores began to heal, I was escorted back to the Koranic School. I might not have gone back if Uncle Qorrax hadn”t taken me there himself. “Discipline,” he said to Aw-Adan, “is the mother of learning. Here,” he handed me over to him again, “teach him to read and write.”
And someone says: why are you so vindictive?
In a 1956 speech to the Somalis of the Ogaden, Emperor Haile Selassie said: “Go to schools, my people. For there, you will have a good chance to learn to read and write Amharic. Only then will you be able to take over the various positions in the central government administration. And remember this: lack of knowledge of Amharic, which is the national language of Ethiopia, will prove a great barrier to economic improvement and individual and communal betterment. Learn to read and write Amharic. It’ll do you a lot of good,’
Nomadic camps were rounded up and their children taken away to schools in Upper Ethiopia—boys and girls who were barely six years old. They were sent to different schools in the non-Somali-speaking regions of the country, so they would lose contact with other Somalis and with one another. Amharic—the language of a minority imposed upon a majority. Arabic—an alien language with its alien concepts and thoughts imposed forcefully upon the mind of a child. One is not beaten as harshly when one is learning in one’s mother-tongue, surely? Does learning come naturally? Do things flow smoothly, then? The brutal force of the written tradition imposed upon the thinking of one belonging to a non-written tradition? The brutal force of adults imposed upon a child? I am not sure why I kept the cutting giving the full text of the famous 1956 speech which Emperor Haile Selassie delivered to the people of the Ogaden. On its margin, I can read Uncle Hilaal’s scrawling hand: “It is revolutionary, isn’t it, that we vindicate our people’s language, culture and justice?”
To vindicate. To be vindictive?
Following the confrontations between Aw-Adan and myself, one day, Misra said: “It worries me to think what you will do when you grow up. You’re not yet six years old but the hate in your eyes frightens me. As though you really mean it when you say you will kill Aw-Adan, or kill Uncle Qorrax or, for that matter, me.”
“True,” I admitted. “I am vindictive.”
“But why?” she said.
I wouldn’t tell her. She looked miserably worried and frightened. I began to recite a Koranic verse which she repeated after me. My hand rested under her ribs and I could feel her heartbeat, I could sense the tremor of her caged emotions.
“I’m sorry I cannot help myself being who I really am.”
“Of course, you can,” she said. “You’re very young, almost a baby.”
We made peace.
I behaved as though I were convinced that being caned by Aw-Adan was part of the ritual of growing up, that in a way, it was for my own good—didn’t learning the Koran form a part of the ritual of growing up spiritually? It was also a trade. After all, I could teach it if I landed with no other profession. Also, she reminded me of something Uncle Qorrax had said: that the flesh was the teacher’s and he could treat it as he wished. And if, for purposes of teaching this young boy the Word of God, you were to discolour his body with bruises or injure it slightly, so be it. Uncle had said it was to train my spirit so it would dispel Satan.
Yes, Misra and I made peace. We forged a union of our bodies. After all, she was a woman and she could be beaten or taken at will. I was a child and the same tyrannical persons could beat me or maltreat me.
“You promise that you will not see either of them?” I said.
She promised. Then she said: “You promise that you’ll learn the Koran and will behave well.”
I promised.
There was a very long pause. Then she said: “What we must do one of these days, so you can be a man, is to have you circumcised, have you purified.” And she looked at me.
My head moved, as though of its own accord, away from the body to which it didn’t feel at all connected. I shunned contact with her, I wouldn’t permit her to touch me. I scrambled over to the other side of the bed and sat on the edge, my feet danglingly touching the floor. It was such a plague to think that I would finally be separated from Misra and the thought gripped my heart and played tricks with its beating rhythm. I would live in a territory of pain for a fortnight or a month following the circumcision and then in a land of loneliness—forever separated from Misra. Maybe I would be given a bed of my own and I would have to sleep by myself after that.
III
I would sleep with the loox-slate between my legs. This not only enabled me to keep her from coming anywhere near me but it also gave me the warmth, the security and continuity I most deservedly needed: that of reading the slate night and day; and that of seeking nobody’s company save that of the Holy Word. I slept with the Sacred Word sweet on my tongue and awoke chewing it in place of Misra’s profane name. In secret, I would drink the writings which I had washed off the slate, believing it would help retain the Word’s wisdom, a day, a week or a month longer. During the long silences between myself and Misra, my thumb would busily trace and retrace, with the help of the index finger, a Koranic verse or a tradition of the Prophet’s; at times, I would copy, using my body instead of the slate, a short verse which I had committed to memory; I would copy the verse again and again and again until my veins flowed, like ink, with the blood of the Word. The Word became my companion, the slate the needed extension of my body and I chanted selected verses of the Koran whenever Aw-Adan called on Misra, as he was accustomed to doing after dusk, verses which promised heaven for the pious and a hellish reward for the adulterous and the wicked.
“Do you know that Askar will be circumcised the day after tomorrow?” she said to him one evening, speaking loud enough for me to hear it. “Hell become a man from then on, you’ll see,” she predicted.
A stray dog howled in the distance and, right there and then, I choked on the Word and my speech flew in fright, like a bird at the approaching of boots crushing under their heels a mound of gravel. Above all, my ears were filled with a din associated with that of fear. I held the slate tightly in my grip until the blood that had rushed to my heart began to circulate normally again. When I resurfaced, I was back where I had begun—I was motherless, I was fatherless, I was an orphan and had to give birth to myself. Yes, I was to re-create myself in a worldly image, I thought to myself, now that the Word had deserted me, now that I couldn’t depend on its keeping me company. The Word, I said to myself, was not a womb; the Word, I convinced myself, wouldn’t receive me as might a mother, a woman, a Misra. And so I waited for Aw-Adan to leave and, just as Misra returned, she saw me standing in the doorway, suggesting that we embraced—opening my arms like a bird opens its wings when about to fly off. We embraced warmly, we embraced tightly, then she laughed, laughed in such a way that I could sense mockery in it. Offended, I let go. Once apart, I saw why Apparently, the slate had become an impediment disallowing her to hug me comfortably, since its sharpened edge embarrassingly pressed itself against her pelvis.
“You naughty little boy,” she said, teasing me.
I said, “I'm sorry.”
Again teasing me, she said, “I’m not sure if you are sorry.” And while laughing, she bent double, half-leaning against me, while supporting her great weight on her knees which were on the floor. A spatter of her saliva had begun to descend on the slate which was lying flat on the floor, nearer me.
And I noticed the letters of a verse I had written on my bare thigh run into one another, with the letter “o” closing its eyes in misted tears as of remorse. The other letters were reduced to tawdry shapes and a straggle of formless figurines.
“You naughty thing,” I said, teasing her.
She stopped laughing to say, “I am sorry,” only to continue laughing away.
“I am not sure if you are sorry,” I said, teasing her as before.
In silence, we listened to the crickets call to one another. A little later, Misra was moving about, preparing a bath for me. I knew what she would do—she would dip her finger in the water to feel how warm it was, for she knew, more than anyone else, what my body could or couldn’t take. Now she mixed hot and cold water and took a long time deciding whether the temperature was right. I asked myself if it was possible that she might have forgotten what she had known about my body in the few days she and I were separated by the slate or what had been written on it. Before I could answer the question myself, Misra was dragging me to the open courtyard: and under the starry night, we stood in the baaf. She was fully dressed and I, naked. And with a tin which had originally contained tomato-purée, or some such manufactured item, she scooped the lukewarm water and washed me. I felt her calloused palms on my young, smooth skin, and felt ticklish and laughed and laughed and laughed and was very, very happy as only children can be. She was playfully rough and rubbed the soap in my hair but said “I am sorry” when she realized that soaped water had entered my eyes. Then she kissed my soaped forehead and looked into my eyes, which I opened as she splashed water on my face. The moon was up and bright, the stars too, but I couldn’t see the colour of the water which I imagined to be as blue as a bruise. I jumped up and down in glee, oblivious of the fact that the Koranic writings had ended up in the same baaf as the dirt between my toes. I decided I wouldn’t hold the slate between my legs that night, and the following night too. Misra and I slept in each other’s embrace and the slate was left in a comer until after I was made a man.
Maps Page 11
