‘Burn it! Burn it! Burn it!’ the audience chanted.
While the activists dithered, a long arm reached out from within the crowd and held a lighter to the effigy’s foot. It went up in a burst, scattering burning confetti over their heads.
Filsan squealed and ducked away as the incandescent flakes landed over her bare skin. Abdurahman threw his shoulder over her arm and ran with her back to the entrance, holding her close in the stampede. Rahma and Idil ran past laughing. Filsan reached into the flow of bodies like a fisherman and caught Idil’s wrist.
‘Man, this country’s crazy!’
‘Ramshackle is the word,’ corrected Rahma.
‘How can you guys live like this?’
‘This is your country too.’ Filsan exchanged a knowing look with Abdurahman. The girls seemed to be constantly disparaging something: ‘Look at that naaasty man eating with his naaasty hands’; ‘look at that naaasty bread sitting on that counter’; ‘you expect me to sit on that naaasty hole?’ Everything was so ‘naaasty’, and sometimes so najaas, if they felt like speaking Somali. They turned the flowery written English she learned at school into a harsh language only intended for criticism.
‘Hey! Sharmarke, Farhan, Zakariya, we’re here,’ Abdurahman shouted to his friends.
They joined together in a group of seven and headed back to the street. It was already four in the afternoon and Filsan wanted to return home to Casa Populare, put her feet up and read one of Rahma’s stupid romance novels before dinner.
‘We can’t go back yet,’ wailed Idil. ‘We sit in every goddamn night. I’m bored, Filsan, bored!’
‘We have to be home before it gets dark,’ Filsan replied softly.
‘They are never home before late and there is still two hours until it gets dark,’ she spat.
‘As you please.’ Filsan held her hands up in submission.
‘Let’s go to the cinema, there is one nearby in Ceel Gaab, we’ll catch a film and walk you home before it gets dark.’ Abdurahman ushered them in front of him before rolling his eyes at Rahma and Idil’s backs.
They followed Via Makka Al-Mukarama down to Ceel Gaab, covered their noses against the dark clouds of exhaust fumes at the bus terminal, crossed the old Italian square and stopped for a moment as a funk band – bass guitar, lead guitar, organ, saxophone, drum set and male vocalist – jammed in a storeroom open to the street.
‘Now this is what I want to see. Africa gone funky, baby,’ shouted Idil, clicking her fingers and twisting her hips.
‘We are not all so hopeless then?’ Abdurahman asked teasingly.
‘Not every last one, no,’ she replied flatly.
They reached the Ceel Gaab cinema, sandwiched between an Indian jewellers and an Italian café with an extravagant espresso machine on the counter. A street urchin lurked by the entrance and pulled at their clothes until they bought a few bags of roasted peanuts from him.
‘I hope there is a Kirk Dabagalaas film showing, Kirk Dabagalaas burns the other actors off the screen,’ Abdurahman said, and immediately Filsan knew what her cousins would do.
While Idil fell into a burst of hysterics, Rahma dropped her chin, looked at him over her eyebrows and repeated ‘Kirk Daba-ga-laas?’ in disgust.
Filsan thought she could see beads of sweat rise along Abdurahman’s hairline. ‘That is his name.’
‘His name is Kirk DOUGLAS, not Dabagalaas, DOUGLAS.’
‘Who cares, Idil? Who CARES! Why don’t you stop pretending you’re American for once? You were born in the same hospital as me, weren’t you?’ Filsan was centimetres away from her cousin’s shocked face.
The sisters went silent then and stayed far away from Filsan as they climbed up to the wooden balcony seats. A revolutionary song played before the feature, and Filsan and the boys stood and sang, ‘This blessed government, this blessed work . . .’ while Idil and Rahma chewed their peanuts. It wasn’t even an American film in the end but a Chinese picture, in which an imperial spy was caught by bandits in a distant province and forced to fight his way back to the Forbidden City. Filsan enjoyed the first half but then felt the time drag. She adjusted Abdurahman’s watch to the light and saw it was already past six; it would be nightfall in a few minutes. She fidgeted in her seat, afraid the sisters would not come with her if she got up to leave, so she forced herself to wait, no longer paying attention to the film, just hearing the violent sound-effects as she looked yearningly at the exit.
The lights finally came on at ten past seven and she hurried to the door and down the steps to the street. The sky was black and moonless, the palm trees lit up like giant pineapples in the square.
‘Let’s hurry,’ she shouted to Rahma and Idil, as they hauled their feet out of the cinema.
‘Don’t worry, we will see you home.’Abdurahman gestured towards the bus station, where ten-seater Fiat buses waited for customers.
They left the centre of town in an old bus that had most of the stuffing exploding out of the chairs. A teenage conductor with three missing fingers squeezed around their legs to collect the five-shilling fare in his good hand. Filsan watched the city through plastic flower-garlanded windows; as they approached the suburbs the roads were sandy and the villas modern, sharp-edged, protected by club-carrying watchmen at their gates.
‘Would you like to visit Hamar Weyne tomorrow? I can take you and your cousins to the market, there is a good Yemeni Café where we can sit and have a juice . . .’
She didn’t turn her face from the window. ‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘She is too hard, leave it,’ Sharmarke whispered.
‘Here!’ shouted Filsan as they passed the Coca-Cola advert near her corner of Casa Populare.
The bus screeched to a stop and the whole group disembarked. Filsan turned to Abdurahman, ‘It’s fine, you can leave us here.’
‘We’ll just walk you up a little further,’ he said, following her.
He was trying to be polite but Filsan was in enough trouble already without risking her father seeing them with a gang of boys.
She saw him then, or at least his silhouette, lit up by the veranda light as he stood in the street. The shadow he cast on the ground was huge and terrifying.
‘Please . . . just stay here.’ Filsan waved Abdurahman back and walked the last ten metres to the house as if she were a mountaineer battling Arctic winds and altitude sickness; she felt the blood drain from her head to her ankles, and heard nothing but the scrape of her feet on the sand.
It was almost a release when the first blow came, a backhanded slap to the side of her head that pulled out the Minnie Mouse clips her cousins had bought her. She heard their screams from far behind.
She was limp, like a doll, as he took her arm and threw her up the steps to the veranda.
‘Throw the devil off your back, Adan,’ called her uncle from the doorway. ‘Let the girl go.’
‘Aabbo, stop him!’ one of the girls shouted.
‘She did nothing wrong!’ a boy’s voice yelled.
Filsan couldn’t tell them apart anymore, her senses were shrouded, as if parts of her mind were shutting down, faculty by faculty.
Uncle Abukor tried to pull her away from her father’s grip but he shouldered him out of the way.
Rahma and Idil were inside the house now too, all five of them struggling in the narrow hallway. Intisaar watched from the kitchen door, her eyes wide as she wiped her hands repeatedly on a cloth.
Her father’s hand was wrapped in her hair. ‘Where have you been?’ His spittle landed on her neck as he shook her head from side to side. ‘Is it time for you to follow in your mother’s footsteps? I shouldn’t have kept you! You scorpion, you whore, you don’t deserve to carry my name or my father’s. You were going to bring those boys, those dogs into my house? You thought while your uncle was here that you could do what you liked? Idiot! I should throw you out! Let you live in the gutter with your filthy mother.’
Filsan saw her uncle’s podgy little hands trying
to beat back her father, his brown shoes doing a desperate shuffle on the tiles, but it was no use; he had to ride out his rage, it was worse if it was truncated.
She saw a glimpse of Rahma and Idil clinging to each other by the wall, their mouths twisted as they howled; they looked ridiculous.
His blows were losing their force and he turned to sharp slaps instead, his untrimmed nails sometimes catching her skin. ‘Get up to your room,’ he panted and pushed her up the stairs. ‘Intisaar! Check her underwear. If you find anything pack her bags and put her out.’
Filsan scampered up the stairs like an animal on her hands and knees and crawled into her dark room, too afraid to switch the light on. Intisaar’s heavy steps followed her upstairs, boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom, in time with her pounding heart.
The door creaked open and before Intisaar had to say anything, Filsan reached under her pleated skirt, pulled off her high-waisted cotton underpants and scrunched them with trembling fingers into her housekeeper’s outstretched palm.
‘Oh, what a life,’ Intisaar sighed before closing the door.
It was two days before her bedroom door was unlocked and she hadn’t moved from the crouched place she had found on the floor. When she finally stood up her eyes darkened and her knees gave way. Intisaar hooked her under the arms, kicking away the untouched plates of yoghurt-soaked rice she had made for her, and guided her to the bathroom where she gently washed her bruised body. The house was silent; her uncle and cousins had moved out to the Al-Uruuba Hotel in protest, Intisaar said, and Filsan was relieved she wouldn’t have to see their faces again or deal with their pity.
Waiting for her on the desk at the Mobile Military Court office is an envelope embossed with the governmental crest. She opens it delicately and slips out the card. It is from the propaganda office instructing her to go to Radio Hargeisa where she will be interviewed. Major Adow must have informed them about the Salahley raid. Filsan throws the card onto the desk; she has waited so long to be noticed but now wants to hide in the corner, slip into the darkness with the cockroaches. They expect her at the radio station at three p.m.
Her report on the events in Salahley is at the top of a pile of documents, covered in a garland of signatures and stamps from different offices.
Captain Yasin enters the office. ‘I hear you’re a real soldier now.’ He makes a pistol of his fingers and pretends to pull the trigger at her.
Filsan hides her face in a file and murmurs nonsense words in reply.
‘You’ll get promoted now they’ve seen what you’re capable of.’
She lifts her head. ‘Really?’
Captain Yasin smiles. ‘Of course, they can parade you around like a prize camel, show you off to the foreign journalists who are always criticising the government.’
‘They want me to go on the radio.’
‘There you go.’ Yasin lights his first cigarette of the day. ‘Next you will be receiving a summons to Brigadier-General Haaruun’s office to get a star on your epaulette.’
Haaruun’s name chills her. She will never receive anything good from him. It is better to stay here, underneath the radar, than risk more humiliation at his hands.
‘You owe me in a big way. I can imagine you as the President’s number three wife, reciting his own sayings back to him!’ He guffaws at his own joke.
‘Why are you not on television, Captain? Your talents are wasted here,’ she says, finally rising to the bait.
Filsan skips lunch and arrives at Radio Hargeisa half an hour early. The studio stretches along the whole top floor of the building. The British had built it just as they were preparing to leave and it’s now an institution within Hargeisa, the broadcasters as familiar as relatives to the city’s population. Filsan waits behind the microphone as Ali Dheere reads the news: thousands reported dead after a massacre in a Kurdish village in Iraq, Soviets report a build-up of arms by Afghan rebels, Archbishop Tutu has been released after marching on the Cape Town parliament with two dozen church leaders. As she listens to the news Filsan feels a brief moment of solace. The whole world is aflame with conflict; what she has done in Salahley pales into insignificance compared to what is commonplace in Iraq and South Africa. Saddam Hussein is rumoured to be poisoning his dissidents, while the Afrikaners take their opponents to quarries and kill them on makeshift electric chairs.
‘We have joining us this afternoon a very special guest,’ Ali Dheere begins. A Mogadishu girl who is serving her country in the armed forces, a remarkable young lady, in fact, who has put aside the usual desire to settle down with a family of her own . . .’
Filsan takes a sip of water from the glass beside her.
‘. . . and has taken up arms to defend the country. Her name is Corporal Filsan Adan Ali and she is the first woman to engage the enemy in battle since the Ogaden War. Corporal Adan Ali, welcome.’
‘Thank you,’ Filsan says softly into the circular microphone.
Ali Dheere gestures for her to speak up. ‘So, Corporal, what made you want to become a soldier? It is an extraordinary occupation for a woman, isn’t it?’
‘Uh . . . I . . . my . . . father is in the military and I always wanted to follow in his footsteps, that is the main reason, I think.’
‘Haa . . . so it is a family tradition passed on from your father. What do you think are the particular challenges of being female in the army?’
Filsan takes a minute to think, to censor opinions that are better left unsaid.
Ali Dheere winds his hand in the air as if to speed her up.
‘It is really no different. We experience the same training, are given the same responsibilities, face the same dangers as our male comrades. There is no special treatment.’
‘I see, but there are still very few of you, aren’t there? Why is that?’
Filsan is now on autopilot, reciting the lessons she has been taught from junior school onward. ‘The revolution is still in its early days, slowly combating and defeating reactionary traditions and superstitions. The Comrade has shown us that men and women are equal and we can both play a part in improving our country.’ These are the words of her year-six textbook.
‘This isn’t the first time you have made the news, Corporal. We have a copy of the October Star from March nineteen seventy-five, and here is a picture of you receiving a medal from the President. How did you manage to obtain a medal at such a young age?’ He laughs.
‘I taught rural workers in Dhusamareb during the literacy campaign and my students passed the state literacy test at a higher rate than any others in the district.’
‘And how did that feel . . . meeting the President?’
Filsan tries to remember the moment, but it is in a haze, captured fuzzily by her father’s camera. She was on an assembly line, given ten seconds before an official shoved her along, but she recalls that he had wrapped her hands in his as they greeted, parted her shoulder and held her gaze. He seemed genuinely proud.
‘It was the greatest moment of my life.’ Filsan hesitates in case it sounds an exaggeration. ‘I knew then that I would dedicate my life to the revolution.’
‘Excellent. You are a woman of your word too, because you recently put yourself on the frontline to tackle the insurgency threatening the stability of the nation. Could you tell us more about that?’
Filsan takes a deep breath; she just has to stick to what they put into the report. ‘We were sent to Salahley to discourage civilians from harbouring terrorists; we had intelligence that a few naïve individuals had been induced to give material aid and shelter to the agents of Ethiopia, and as the political officer it was my duty to express the government’s wishes.’
‘There was a confrontation with the rebels, wasn’t there? In which you were caught up?’
‘Ah . . .’ Her fingernails rap on the table as she wonders how much to give away.
Ali Dheere points to the table and wags his finger.
She places her hands in her lap and leans forward. ‘We were ambushed by thre
e rebels who had been sheltering in the village. They were dressed as civilians but armed. I was the first to engage them but then my comrades provided support and the attack was brought to a positive conclusion.’
‘Never let it be said that a woman is weaker than a man. We have lionesses in Somalia ready to jump to our defence. Corporal Adan Ali, thank you for your sacrifices and we are honoured to have you within our military. Comrades, let us keep our eyes and ears open so that young patriots such as Corporal Adan Ali are not put in unnecessary danger.’
The first strains of a political anthem and a wave from Ali Dheere let her know that she is free to leave.
Filsan jogs down the stairs of the station, almost tap-dancing with nervous energy. The interview had been a kind of ambush, a flurry of questions that she was too obedient not to answer, but Filsan likes the image created of her by Ali Dheere: it is heroic and martial and impermeable, a woman apart, giant yet ethereal, a jinn with a sword clutched to her breast. A jinn that wouldn’t suddenly remember the sandals of the one she had struck down, the sweat-stained strap under his calloused foot, the loose latticework of leather over his toes. Filsan has to drag the alternative version of events she had recounted to Ali Dheere into her mind to rub out the real flashes of memory. Lieutenant Afrah had said as he tried to calm her down in the truck back to Hargeisa that thoughts of the man would eventually sift down and settle beneath other events and concerns. Filsan would wait it out but there seemed to be parts of the jigsaw to put together first: why couldn’t she remember firing the gun? What happened in those seconds just before and after? What hole had she slipped through?
Captain Yasin makes an aeroplane from a card and throws it towards Filsan’s desk. It glides just short and lands beside her feet; it is her request for leave stamped with ‘APPPROVED’. In just six weeks Filsan will be back in her yellow room with the cherry-print curtains. She craves Intisaar’s cooking, her crispy lamb sambuusi, the grilled fish served with spiced and sweetened vermicelli, and hot oily bajiye dipped in green chilli sauce. Intisaar the maid, paid a thousand shillings a week, has been everything a mother should be to her; while Intisaar’s own children were raised by their grandmother, she laboured in the malign atmosphere of their silent house. Filsan writes down a list of things to buy Intisaar from Hargeisa, things that show she knows her and has been thinking about her – a silver necklace, or even a gold one if she can afford it, imported Taarab records, support bandages for her swollen knee. The last item might be the most appreciated now that Intisaar has crossed the border from middle age into old age; at fifty-seven the marrow starts to dry up, she had said in her musical Bajuni accent, and from then on you are just waiting for your bones to turn to dust. She would hold Intisaar’s bones together with splints and tape if she had to rather than lose her. How much better would her life have been if she had been born to her? Sleeping huddled with her siblings in a mud and stick cariish, falling into whichever arms lay nearest, tasting love in her mother’s milk, when she returned smiling at night.
The Orchard of Lost Souls Page 18
