Maps

by Nuruddin Farah

  You watched in reverent silence.

  The young boy dipped it wholly in the water, removing the grains of sand which had been lodging in there. He shook it a little too roughly, emptying it of life. As he held it away from himself, the young boy watched, with utter amazement (or was it amusement?) as the insects moved, in a fury of fright and frenzy, as they scattered here and there—like a cinema crowd running confusedly down the exit stairway because the safety-curtain had caught fire. When he was satisfied that he had emptied it of life of all forms, he dipped it again in water, soaped it again and again until it was as white as the foams the sea frothed at his feet. From where you stood, you could read the letter “M” tattooed on the skull in blue. And you provided the missing letters ofthat name—just as you had earlier put a name to a face you had seen.

  Do you remember any of that?

  You don’t? How very weird!

  You asked the young boy why he was washing the skull clean. As if in response to you, he dipped it in water and drank from it. You stared at him in total bewilderment.

  He said, “There is life in death, there is death in life.”

  Not only that he said nothing original, but the fact that you didn’t ask him anything—this, perhaps, made you stare at him in a hostile manner. Then he explained, “This skull belonged to a man who raped his own daughter. He died in old age, a hated man, a man without friends, a man alienated from his own community. For years, he saw dreams in which he wore a young girl’s face. He died in a tempestuous flood,’

  At least, admit you remember this.

  You don’t?

  Your memory, dare I say? is very selective!

  VI

  You swam through the gate of purgatory and washed clean your doubts in the waters of certainty. You were penurious in your comments, but, once it was suggested by Uncle, you agreed to call at the hospital where Misra had undergone an operation in which she lost a breast. (Her state of mind was such that she couldn’t determine how she “felt”. “Perhaps more like a man,” she said, half-laughing, “now that I have to have the chest bandaged forever.”) She lay in hospital, pained. You called on her, doubtful of your own reactions. You sat by her and held her hand in yours—you hardly knew what to say. Your conversations, needless to say, were replete with empty silences, unfilled spaces, incomplete dots, and inconsistent holding on to, or letting go of, certain consonants, before you pronounced the vowels preceding them clearly and accurately.

  You remembered that, in the hospital corridor just before you entered her private ward, you had seen a young boy, aged five, walk into the Ladies’, escorted by his mother. You remembered thinking how, in sex, age mattered greatly. The women in the hospital’s Ladies’, you suspected, didn’t mind having amongst them a Homo sapiens of the male gender so long as he was small and as yet underdeveloped in so far as the male ego was concerned. And neither did Misra bother about you, when you were such a small boy yourself. Now, you could see how self-conscious she was, how prudent in her self-preservation, how cautious in her mannerisms, how womanly aware of the man in you. If you were honest with yourself, you would’ve requested that she showed you how much of the breast the doctor had removed—and you almost did so. Which was how you knew she couldn’t tell whether it was the left or the right the surgeon’s knife had eaten into. Should she make a display of it in the way those returning from the Ogaden war had exhibited the stump of the leg, the grazed forehead or the broken nose-joint? Should she, or should she not blame it on the war as everybody had blamed every misfortune or misdeed that befell him or her?

  You said, your hand resting near her kneecap, “And how have things been with you?”

  She spoke of what worried her: that she thought the nurse attending to her was related to someone from Kallafo and that she was mortally worried that the nurse might report on her or poison her food or mix wrongly, but deliberately (although it might appear innocently) all her medicines so she would take them and die of the poisonous mixture. But how was she certain that the nurse knew of her background? Because of the way she asked questions about Kallafo “without my ever mentioning the name of that accursed town, without my ever saying that I came from that wretched place”. This was what made her think that a woman with whom the nurse had spoken amicably was related to a male patient in an adjacent ward, a man who had come from the war in the Ogaden “without his manhood, for a bomb had blown off his testicles. And what use can a man make of a penis without testicles?” she asked, underlining, in her voice, the words “penis” and “testicles”.

  Should I not tell that the nurse knew she was from Kallafo because Uncle Hilaal was the one who had filled in the form and that he had been told he might, in the end, persuade the hospital authorities to give a deduction on the basis of the patient’s coming from Kallafo? you thought to yourself.

  “You believe that I am paranoid?” she asked.

  You said, “Of course not.”

  Would you help her if she were in terrible need? she inquired of you. Would you keep watch on the movements of people if this became absolutely necessary? Would you spill your own blood to save her? Would you kill those who were plotting to do her in? Of course you would. You wouldn’t take them to court or anything, but you would use the knife they had used to kill her in order to take vengeance? But you caught your breath with a view to slowing down the pace of the conversation and you asked why it mattered whether you would take her murderers to court or kill them yourself with your own hands and with the same weapon as they had used? She reasoned that almost all the courts in Somalia would set the culprits free because they had killed, on suspicion, a woman who was not Somali herself and whose innocence was harder to believe or even to account for.

  “Be truthful,” you began to say, deliberately slowly “Be truthful and tell me what I must know if I must take vengeance. Did you or did you not do it? Be truthful.”

  She shifted in her bed and you let go her hand. You could sense she had moved into that undefined space between a smile and a cry. She held her head up lest her nose dripped, lest her eyes emptied themselves of the tears welled up in them. She remained motionless but tense, the way one might when one is anticipating one’s system to emit a storm of a sneeze when one is in respectable company without a clean handkerchief.

  “To think that you might suspect me of betraying” she said, once she could speak. “I would have thought myself incapable of doing any such wicked thing until somebody said I had done it.”

  You didn’t say anything.

  “To think that you could even suspect me of betraying…” And then she burst into tears, shaking a little. You held her hand tighter in yours, for you could feel the tremor in her body, you could sense the torment in her pained soul.

  After a pause, you said, “Who was it that accused you of being a traitor?”

  “That most wretched, most wicked man,” she swore.

  “What’s his name?”

  You could see how it hurt when she said, “That most sinful man.”

  “His name?”

  Again, she tilted her head forward so her chest wouldn’t pain her most awfully, you thought. And her body emitted a tremor that was total, like an earthquake’s. You were both in a room, somewhere in Kallafo, and it was you who was taking your body’s pained measurements, your body’s space, as the guide in your dealings with other people, for it was you who had been in pain.

  She said, “I had trusted him, how I trusted him.”

  “His name?” you said, speaking like one who would kill.

  She finally said, “Aw-Adan.”

  There was suddenly a power cut. The room became hot and stuffy and you couldn’t think of anything to say. Neither could she.

  VII

  A week later, when she was still in hospital, you showed Uncle Hilaal and Salaado your first completed drawing, because you thought you were satisfied with it. In it, there is a man of about sixty, with a loincloth for a wrapper, and he has, sitting on his lap, a
hen. The man’s features clearly indicate his origin—he’s an Adenese. Behind him, there is a guava orchard and, standing purposelessly about, there are a few young boys, aged between ten and fifteen. It is obvious that the boys are waiting for something. But they are all looking up—some, evidently, at the blue sky, a sky peaceful as it is inviting; others at a hill upon whose most northern point is hoisted a mast flying a white flag.

  To the left of the Adenese-looking man with the pointed features, there is a woman, larger than a quarter of the canvas. The woman’s body is divided into four squares and in each square, the artist manages to place an appropriate image. In one, a horseman is dropped to the floor and the horse rides the wind, eastwards; in another, a man in priestly robes is counting money, and re-counting it so he will at least get that right; in a third, there is an infant cradled in innocence and his stare dissolves in tears—but one can see where his stare is focused—at the huge woman; and in the furthest square, that is the fourth, the infant has grown bigger and is lying down on his chest and is learning to shoot a rifle. His eyes are now fixed on the hill above him.

  To the east of the woman, the ocean. And at its shores, a festive crowd, shouting slogans of victory. Everybody here is looking at the sky. The day is bright with light but there is a solitary star and it is displaying only three of its five points. Is every member of this festive crowd wondering why all the star’s points aren’t there, why they have been amputated and by whom?

  Further east but northerly, there is a young man posed in quiet elegance. He is big now. Slung round his shoulders, a gun. And beside him lies a woman who is in pain. To her left, blood. To her right, a knife, stained with caked blood.

  VIII

  A few days later, you did something you had never done before. You brought a girl home with you and took her to your room. The girl’s name was Riyo. She was a classmate of yours. Often, you went to her place. But today, you came to yours because her parents’ house was busy with people coming and going, for some event was taking place there and she didn’t have to attend it. Riyo was a year younger than you but you liked her a lot because she hardly ever asked you questions and you were gentle with each other. She helped you with your English, which she spoke almost like a native. She had been bom in Britain, where her father had done his higher education. She was weak in maths and physics and you drew her maps for her when your geography teacher assigned one as your homework.

  Riyo was delightfully surprised to see your collection of maps and books. She also envied you the space you had in the house—a room all to yourself. She had known of these before, but confessed she didn’t believe them to be true. She suspected you made them all up just as some other boys she had met at school or elsewhere invented the stories they narrated to city girls who were impressionable. Of course, you were honest with her. As expected, you told her that you were likely to leave for the war front if called up. Her only comment was, “But aren’t wars dangerous? I’ve seen films in which people get killed. You won’t die, will you?” She was sweet and had an innocent look and her face wore a smile, as though forever. There was something worshipful about her eyes when she stared at you, listening to you pontificate on a subject you had discussed with either Hilaal or Salaado. Her face reminded you of a girl you saw in a dream the day you crossed the de facto border at Feer-Feer. She was the kind of girl you could trust, the kind that you could have as a companion and as a wife if you went on a sabotage mission or had a job to do. It was with her that you left your manuals from which you learnt how to dismantle a revolver or start a car without the proper ignition keys. Once, you left in her care a couple of Playboy4ike magazines. She kept them for days without even opening them. And when you showed her your paintings, she confessed she didn’t understand what they were about, but imagined she would love them if she did. She said, “You are indeed talented.” And you were very pleased.

  Then you told her about Misra, She said, “Poor thing, I am sorry for her, I really am.”

  “She is in hospital,” you said, “and I am going to visit her. Perhaps today” But you didn’t tell her why she was in hospital and neither did she ask And you said, “Would you like to come with me?”

  “I don’t like hospitals very much, but if you like, I will come,” she said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I

  I was eating, with great relish, a slice of the sky and it was most delicious. It was blue—as steaks are brown when well done—and it lay in great heaps in front of me, with a star crowning it as though it were some sort of icing, a star already partly eaten. I was unhappy that I couldn’t determine how many points the star had had in the first place and how many it had now I knew I could have had the clouds for my dessert if I chose to. I also knew I was sitting on a water mattress in the shape of a water-bottle, which was why I sat unevenly, swaying every now and then, whenever I changed position or had a mouthful.

  I wasn’t alone in the hall. That I could tell from the din of voices which served as background to my silent thinking. For instance, among the voices which I could easily identify were those of Uncle Hilaal, Salaado, Aw-Adan, my tutor Cusmaan—but not Misra’s. Also, there were a number of my own peers and some had grown taller than I, some thinner, some weightier. But their experiences were nothing compared to mine, their mental reach definitely not as wealthy and varied as mine. I didn’t know what to say to them. Their conversations with one another placed them in the geography of infancy whose maps and contours meant very little to them. I noticed there were no soul-searching questions asked, and that their lives centred on material acquisitions and on who owned what and how much this or that item cost. Not I!

  The hall was very bright and I could see and identify every face I knew. Naturally, I looked for Misra—if only to ask her how she was; if only to apologize for my not calling on her of late. I thought I had seen her earlier, when not particularly looking for her. Now I went to the same spot. And there was something strange—I felt stupid when I realized that I had been talking to Misra’s dress though she wasn’t there herself. I cannot remember what I said. Now, I stared at the shadow the dress had made and I was more furious with myself. Then I heard the clamour created by a group of teenagers who had just arrived. Because I couldn’t make them stop their annoying chatter, I walked out of the hall myself.

  When outside, I thought to myself that things had to be different from this moment on. You cannot eat the sky as you do steaks, have the clouds as your dessert and expect the universe to turn on its axis, lightening the days with its thundery storms, brightening them with its suns, darkening the night with its dusky hours. I discovered that, although there were hundreds of thousands of men and women partaking of the meal in which slices of the heavens were being served as the first course and the clouds as dessert, we had no common language in which to exchange views, or even communicate our suspicions or fears of this new reality—a reality in which God was but absent; one in which somebody might have had him as his meal. How blasphemous, I thought, and ceased thinking altogether. What? I had a slice of the sky as my first meal, did you say? You must be mad, somebody was bound to say. How could you? And you say you had “God Almighty” as your aperitif. You blasphemous fool. Get out of my sight before I lynch you. Surely, I said to myself, somebody was bound to be infuriated by these blasphemous pronouncements.

  I stood by the window, which was open. The curtain blew in my face and teased it. Then I felt a drop of water on my forehead. I touched the spot with my dry index finger. Another drop and a third. These tasted of salt water. Did it mean that I was near a great body of water? I walked in the direction from where the smell of the ocean came. I walked through a field of ripe Indian corn. I plucked as I went. I plucked the shapeliest of them; I plucked the overgrown ripe corns and threw them aside. I trampled on anything that was in my path. I went on, treading blindly, my hands outstretched ahead of myself as though gathering, or receiving alms. My mind was bent on reaching the ocean whose smell grew less pung
ent the nearer I got to it. Finally, I could sense the grains of sand in my sandals. Although I couldn’t tell why I couldn’t smell the ocean in the blowing breeze.

  And there it was, my feet in it, my cupped hands bringing its salty water so I might take a sip of it, taste it, feel at home in it. There it was for me to swim in and be received by it—large as a womb, warm as life, comforting as a friend.

  And there she was too—Misra, I mean. She stood in the shallows and fishes came to her, playful fishes, going between her legs, the curve of her elbow; small and big fishes, and on occasion even a shark, timid as a lamb. She didn’t see me. She was busy feeding the fishes with her blood, the flow of her period. She was busy tending to the sickly among the fishes, feeding them with motherly care.

  I was utterly in love with her.

  I couldn’t comprehend how anyone could've accused her of betrayal.

  Then I looked up at the sky. I resolved that we couldn’t have eaten it all. All was peaceful. And I wished I were a fish—wouldn’t she feed me? I thought to myself. She had fed me, had cared for me, loved me, brought me up on a body of ideas all her own. How could I bring myself to suspect her of any wrongdoing, how could I?

  She was saying, as she attended to a sickly baby fish, “They came to my ward last night and threateningly said they would kill me—those people from Kallafo. And it frightens me.”

  “I doubt it if they will,” I said. “They dare not.”

  She said, “If and when that happens and I am dead and no more, please take note of what I say to you now—I have not betrayed. I am innocent of the crime. You are the one person I care about so much that I want you to know the honest truth. The rest may go where they please or believe whatever they will. I don’t care.”

  The sea wore its blue gown. The sky had no hiatus. There were clouds in the heavens. And the moon was reflected in the water. And so was our shadow—Misra’s and mine—as we embraced.