Adua

by Igiaba Scego

  The second day they came upon some shepherds. They slept with them in empty tukuls and satisfied their thirst with the goat milk they were offered. They also spent their third day with the shepherds. On the fourth, Haji Safar said: “We must leave you. We have to cross the sea.”

  Their donkey was tired. Haji Safar petted his neck affectionately. “Not much longer, my old man. Just one more little push and we will reach the place we need to reach.”

  It was after these words that the dry smell of the bush was replaced by the sudden scent of cinnamon.

  “Smell that, son?” Haji Safar asked, excited. “That’s the smell of Mogadishu.”

  Zoppe was overwhelmed by that chaos of sounds and smells so different from one another.

  Then he saw the colors. He saw the yellow of smiles, the purple of violence, the green of resignation, the pink of tears. The people in Mogadishu wailed. They wailed like an African wild dog about to die. They wailed over unsettled accounts, love gone wrong, a pound of meat that wasn’t enough to feed a family. Haji Safar and Zoppe went through a covered market and the boy was fascinated by the mechanical precision of the goldsmiths at work.

  A flash of greed appeared in the little one’s eyes. He wanted to stay there forever, cover himself in that marvelous gold.

  But the donkey didn’t stop. This wasn’t their destination. They walked for another hour. Then they saw in the middle of an ochre expanse a crane regal in its posture.

  “It’s a sign,” said Haji Safar, who stopped the donkey and his step. “This is where what is to happen will happen.”

  The mosque was in sight, but still far away.

  “I’ll be right back. Wait for me here,” Haji Safar told his son. And he left him alone.

  And that was when, all of a sudden, the pink man appeared.

  On his face was a long yellow beard and on his head a few fog-colored curls. He was dressed in a long black cloth, his feet weren’t visible, his hands just barely, and they were pink too.

  “What if he eats me?” Zoppe thought.

  “Father,” he started shouting, “Father, where are you?” “I’m here, can you see me? In front of this big door.”

  Zoppe wondered how to reach him. And that was how he began slowly crawling up the mound leading to the mosque entrance, dragging his crutches behind him.

  The pink man, at the sight of the crawling boy, thought in his mercy to help him. “Aniga waxaan ahay saaxiibka.” I am your friend. Those poorly pronounced words were for little Zoppe the beginning of the end.

  He tossed his crutches aside and began running like mad. Running toward his father, toward salvation.

  “A miracle!” cried Haji Safar.

  And he too ran barefoot toward his son. He lifted the boy, hugged him close, became a father again, and covered him in kisses.

  The word “miracle” provoked a delirium. Word spread inside the mosque and even the imam, with a trail of believers in tow, wanted to come and see. Excitement overwhelmed the old soothsayer like nothing ever before. And he began saying how merciful Allah had been charitable with him and his little Zoppe. “Now if he wants, he’ll be able to fly with the falcons at sunset.”

  As he waited for his father to appear, Zoppe thought of this bond between them that had never faltered. “I’m sure I’ll see him here. It’s our soul place.”

  .

  “Father, don’t leave me,” he murmured, his lips dry from all the excitement.

  Bitter tears lined his well-fed face and he tried to wipe them away quickly with the sleeves of his jelabiyad.

  Over his head a falcon spotted some lost chicks, while a cat looked for a secluded cave to take his final breath in solitude.

  Then the baboon appeared.

  He looked at Zoppe through his spotted mask and seemed to laugh at his desperation. Zoppe wanted nothing more than to throw a rock at that cheeky baboon.

  But something, or someone, stayed his hand.

  The baboon sat on his two feet, his head turned eastward to greet the sun. He raised his free hands, revealing a moon-shaped object clutched in his right hand and displayed like a trophy.

  Then without warning the baboon jumped on him. Aiming right for the turban. “What are you doing, you stupid animal?” he yelled.

  Something had gotten into that baboon and he had no intention of releasing his prey. Zoppe gave up on getting it back.

  “Ah, what a nice breeze,” he remarked. He was grateful to his outburst for liberating him from that servitude.

  “How did you know I hate that turban?”

  The baboon indicated the sun, shaking his hands frantically.

  “You’re a strange beast, you are.” Zoppe chuckled, toying with the dry twigs around him.

  These had been frenetic and painful days for him.

  “Ah, baboon, if only you could give my tormented soul a little relief.”

  The baboon started dancing. He showed off his red bottom irreverently and Zoppe laughed heartily.

  “You monkeys are unpredictable.”

  The baboon shook his head and made a loud noise.

  “What do you know about it, huh? You shake your head like that just for fun. You have no idea what I saw last night. I was awake, not dreaming. If you had seen what I saw you’d quit your laughing and would be crying with me.”

  And Zoppe began to spew words and images. “Last night I saw nothing but death around me. I saw mangled black bodies. Hanged men, houses burned down, hands cut off, decapitated heads stuck on spears, stabbed women, disfigured corpses, children tied up and dragged while still alive, deacons executed, little girls raped. I saw blood, pus, brains. And I saw heads severed from their bodies placed on silver trays surrounded by people laughing. The heads belonged to Ethiopians and the smiling mouths to Italians. I saw them making fun of the corpses and taking pictures of them. Then I saw them wrapping the photos of the horrors to send as gifts to their girlfriends in Italy.”

  Zoppe put his face in his hands and cried like a little child.

  “I sold myself like the Christian Judas for a pile of money. If those people die it’s also my fault. How will I be able to look my friend Dagmawi in the eyes? It would have been better if I’d never been born and my father’s seed had dried up.”

  Zoppe doubled over like a wounded zebra.

  The baboon came near him and started purring like a cat.

  “You’re sweet, baboon. But you can’t understand me. No one can understand me. I can see things before other men, but I wasn’t granted the power to change the future, neither theirs nor mine.”

  The baboon shook his head.

  “But ... but ... so you do understand?”

  Zoppe looked at the half-moon that the animal was holding in his hands. That was when he realized. The baboon was none other than his father, Haji Safar. The old man had kept their appointment.

  28

  ADUA

  Lul told me that Labo Dhegax, my house in Magalo, is worth its weight in gold. “I had it appraised for you, honey.”

  “Well then?” I asked with a lump in my throat that made me greedier than I actually am.

  “Well, the profit would be about a million dollars, give or take a few cents, a net profit, to be clear.”

  I said: “Net, sister?”

  “Yes, dear, you would pocket a cool million dirty American dollars, aren’t you happy?”

  I sank down to the floor. I’d half-fainted, as if someone had given me horrible news. I tried to take deep breaths. I tried to revive the beats in my time-ravaged heart.

  “A million dollars?” I repeated like an idiot. It was a number out of an American TV show, a mafia deal, money laundering, not something I could grasp in my little, old lady reality.

  “But are all the prices for houses and land in Somalia that high?” I asked, stunned.

  “The real estate bubble has peaked and houses are worth gold, sister. And you know, there’s oil here. Everyone is selling, buying, quoting, appraising. It’s like the Wall Stre
et stock exchange. Sure, in Mogadishu everything is more expensive, more inflated, but even in Magalo, I promise you, you can make some big figure deals.”

  “A million dollars? Is that possible? For my rickety old house?”

  “The time to make deals won’t last forever, my sister. We have to go for it now, before it’s too late. Now that they’ve caught a whiff of oil, it’s easy money, but soon they’ll realize that Somalia is a rip-off and the bubble will burst in the sun. And the houses will go back to being the trash they always were.”

  I liked it when Lul made herself my own personal guardian spirit. It was comforting to know that she was always by my side thinking about my needs.

  Meanwhile, that exorbitant figure whirled around in my head: a million dollars. I’d never seen that much money in my life.

  In general money and I have never gotten along. I’ve always spent it badly and in the brief period when I did have some I let myself get hustled like a fool.

  “Get on a plane and come down here. Happiness is here,” my Lul told me. An electronic voice broke into our excited conversation and cut off the line.

  “Lul,” I yelled. Lul ...

  Ah, I really could have used a Lul in 1977. Of course I hadn’t been offered a million dollars then, but a decent stack of Italian lire, yes. And there were the American studios, that small part in a Bond movie they wanted to offer me and that I was dying to play.

  But ...

  But in 1977 there was no Lul to help me. I was alone as a dog and completely at the mercy of Sissi and Arturo. That’s why everything went wrong after a while.

  If she had been by my side, I wouldn’t have ended up penniless, drained dry and duped like a dunce by those lowlifes. Lul would have told me: “You need an agent, honey,” and “make sure to read every clause in the contract you sign.” If Lul had been there I wouldn’t have frozen to death in a miserable little room in a pension on Via Cavour. She would have demanded a bathtub, room service, soft pillows, a dignified wardrobe, comfortable shoes, clean and ironed sheets.

  She would have slapped Sissi and called her a user. And Sissi wouldn’t have dared say to me: “What extravagant requests you have, Adua,” or “What a spoiled Negro you are.” Lul certainly wouldn’t have sent me around in unseemly little rags and with all my skin hanging out. If Lul had been there, Arturo wouldn’t have touched me nor would the marquis have laid his hands on my backside. Lul would have kept me away from the drugs, alcohol, cheap cigarettes, fried food, men who wanted only my body.

  Lul would have brought me back to our traditions. And she would have put me on a diet and would have allowed me sweets only as a treat on Sunday mornings.

  If Lul had been there I wouldn’t have spent so much time crying alone. She would have taken me on walks down Via del Corso to get gelato at Giolitti. If Lul had been there she would have called me at least twice a day, even just to tell me: “I’m so glad you exist in the world.” And then Lul would have told me loud and clear to forget about Nick Tonno. “He’s homosexual, he can’t love you. Get it in your head, abaayo.” Of course she would have advised me to stop obsessing over him, standing below his house every night, buying him flowers I couldn’t afford. “He can only give you friendship, nothing more, accept it and move on.”

  If Lul had been there she would have made me finish school. She would have pulled me by the ear and shoved my nose in the pages of a dictionary. “Without languages you’re nobody,” she would have told me, and after a certain weighty pause she’d have added, “but without your own you’re lost.” If Lul had been there they wouldn’t have made me sign one-sided contracts where I ceded all interest in my name and all merchandising of my character. If Lul had been there I wouldn’t have lost millions of old lire by forgetting to register my official residency at the police station, and with the Italian social security administration. If Lul had been there I would have had proper documents from the very beginning and the opportunity to become an Italian citizen after five years. If Lul had been there I wouldn’t have exhibited myself at seedy promotional events where drunk men slipped bills in my green garter, barking unspeakable obscenities at me. Lul would have demanded respect for my person and I think she would have also intervened with the movie script. She wouldn’t have let me do all those nude running scenes and she would have objected to shooting on the beach in the cold. She would have said something like: “If you want her to run as God made her then rent a set in the Caribbean and not in Capocotta.” If Lul had been there she would have checked the press every day to see what came out about the movie and about me. She would have spared me the pain of headlines like “Burning Hot Black Hole” or “Steamy Kiss from the Abyssinian Abyss.” She would have demanded a title for me that was certainly more dignified than “black Venus” and she would have been furious if anyone said to me on the street, “Hey, black beauty, I’d ride you right now.” If Lul had been there she would have dragged me to the piazza with the women who were protesting for the right to an abortion and she would have shown me that those women were also fighting for my rights, to free my body from the drool-covered desires of a decadent society. If Lul had been there she would have stopped me from depilating myself like a white woman: “But if Somalis aren’t hairy, what are you removing?” And Lul would have also forbidden me to use whitening creams, saying: “Are you crazy? They cause skin cancer! And you fool, your skin tone is beautiful!” And then Lul, I’m sure of it, would have objected like a maniac to my straightening my hair. “You’re ridiculous with this spaghetti, it’s not believable, Adua,” and she would have made me feel how much better it was to be free and keep your own curly hair. And if Lul had been there she would have taught me to be proud of myself. She would have recited my family tree like a poem in hendecasyllables and then she would have said: “You were born from these ancestors’ bones, don’t forget their bones, your roots.” If Lul had been there she would have forced me to call my father. “Parents must be loved.” And she would have whispered in my ear: “Because you don’t know when God will call them back to Him.” If Lul had been there I wouldn’t have made that movie with Arturo, that ugly, obscene movie.

  29

  TALKING-TO

  I saw you. There you were, dressed like an old woman, surrounded by beggars. I saw you, Adua. You didn’t have the courage to enter, to look me in the face, to confront me. Do I really scare you that much, my daughter?

  I saw your movie. I cried.

  I don’t cry. But watching your movie, I cried. I have failed in this life. If I let my own humiliation come to you it only means that I have failed. I don’t know how to treat others, Adua. I didn’t know how to treat that fool, your mother. She loved me too much, the fool. They called her Asha the Rash because deep down she was reckless and she liked to take on lost causes. I was the biggest lost cause of all. She fell in love with my needy eyes. And I, instead of taking her love, went against it. I tried to destroy her and her love along with her. No one has ever loved me so much in this life. No one has ever proven me so right and so wrong. Asha, your mother, wanted to guide me. She’d tell me: “What do you expect from the past? Now you can make up for it. Now you can fix everything. You can be better.” She was always enthusiastic, always optimistic. She died with her optimism. When she brought you into the world, she lasted long enough to see you. She lay her eyes on you and then she expired with a smile. When I saw that life was going out of her I yelled like a madman, I nearly dropped you. The women, diligent, ran over to grab you from my fragile hands. And from that moment on I couldn’t be alone with you. Between us I put indifference, then an invented hate, a terror remote-controlled like those toy cars kids play with today. I don’t know, I didn’t know how to be a father. Maybe I owe you an apology. But I can’t. I don’t know how to use certain words. But I can tell you one thing: watching that movie, I realized how much you’ve suffered in this life. In the end, you and I are no different, someone humiliated us, put us down. I stayed down. Maybe things will turn out better
for you. Maybe.

  30

  ZOPPE

  “Sheeko sheeko, sheeko xariir.”

  Story story, story of silk.

  That’s how all the tales Zoppe heard as a boy began. After the evening prayer, his father would call him over, and he would curl up sweetly at his feet. It was the only place where he felt truly safe. The only place where he felt alive. His father had a strong and sincere voice. A voice that opened up to all magic. The words flowed one after another and created worlds where even a baby chick could rise to the occasion and become the bravest of warriors. Haji Safar knew how to make him laugh, but then without warning he would plunge his son into inaccessible lows. All those demons filling the scenes scared little Zoppe to death. But there was always a clever shepherdess to cheer him up. Howa, Araweelo, Wil Wal—he quickly learned the names of the extraordinary characters that populated his father’s tales. Then one day he grew too big to curl up at his father’s feet, and just as it had begun, that flow of stories stopped. But the words didn’t. They underwent a change. Zoppe was a man now and Haji Safar relied on him for household matters. Every so often politics would come up in conversation too. But it was the stories of their ancestors that bound the old father to his beloved son. Ancient stories scented with cinnamon and cardamom. It was always the father who would speak. Zoppe would just nod or cock his head in a sign of contentment. He didn’t want to destroy those moments with his sharp voice and sputtering rage. He preferred to keep quiet. But that day, at the clearing in front of the Fakr ad-Din mosque, the roles were reversed. It was the father who wanted to hear the son’s story. It was Haji Safar who strained his ears to catch every sound that came out of Zoppe’s mouth.

  “Massawa ... that’s the city I got lost in, Father.” Massawa ...

  It had happened a few days before. Zoppe couldn’t manage to get that cursed place out of his head. It was a port, an inlet, one of the most important cities in Eritrea, that country the Italians insisted on calling the founding colony and which the most inveterate fascists considered the outpost of the empire. The count had an appointment that morning and judging by his pace, he didn’t want to be late. They quickly crossed through the market. And Zoppe’s spirit, despite the rush, was captivated by the showy spectacle that East Africa offered. Languages mixed together in a magical alchemy fused by the sharp taste of dates from Egias. The girls flapped their fans to drive away the voracious flies trying to dirty the blocks of tamarind. The melons from inland and the watermelons grown along the border stood out at the richer stands. Sweet potatoes were everywhere, even on the ground, with the risk of tripping. But what made Zoppe’s heart burst were the little fish fried in big vats of oil. The fish were immersed for a few seconds, just enough time to quiver, and then they were eaten hot with pita baked in terracotta pots. If he had been alone he would have made a buffet of those little fried fish. But Count Anselmi’s steps were too fast and they tore him away. The count moved like a hyena that has spotted its prey. He darted confidently through the labyrinth of narrow streets in the port district.