Knots

by Nuruddin Farah

  She is not responding or reacting to what he is saying. It is as though it has only just now dawned on her that it may make sense to have a rethink and beat a hasty, face-saving retreat. Excited, no doubt suddenly scared, her heart palpitating hard and speedily, she wonders if Zaak can hear it pulsating in disquiet from where he is sitting behind the steering wheel. Even though she is in a fluster, she manages to stay phlegmatic in her bearing, barely betraying her unease. The truth is that deep inside her, she feels like a swimmer who is barely able to keep afloat in a pool of medium size, who is thrown into an ocean. Moreover, her skin is alive with irritability when he releases the brake and his hand meets hers on the way back to his lap, where he has been keeping it ever since getting into the vehicle. She is aware of the difficulty that comes with sharing cabin space. This, after all, has its unpredictable bodily configurations, like being in the same bed with someone you have no desire to touch: unsettling.

  He throws his hands around, making nervous gestures whose meaning is not obvious to her. He says, “I would rather we worked together, you and me, on several what-if scenarios before we called at the property and came face to face with the new reality of civil war Mogadiscio, with which you are hardly familiar, because you arrived only yesterday. That’s all I am saying.”

  Cambara can scarcely believe her ears. She thinks that he may mean well, but can she trust his motives for speaking to her this way? How is she to react to a world in which her eyes gaze in a different way on her altered circumstances, into which she has brought along her unease and her long history of diffidence when it comes to men?

  He tells her, “People here are sensitive to one’s nuances, the hidden and surface meanings of what one says. Every action and every spoken word must be made in an implicit recognition of these. If we do not want the guns dug up from where they have been buried, after the humiliated departure of the U.S. Marines, then we have no choice but to take these sensibilities into account.”

  She thinks she understands his meaning only partially, and she reacts to that portion. She says, “It is hard to think of these people as sensitive or sensible,” she says, her teeth clenched in silent fury. “I think of them as bloodthirsty, clan-mad murderers. That’s how I imagine them. Maybe I am wrong in my judgment. Of course, there have been many others—Somalis and non-Somalis—who have described the warlords differently, as clan elders, which they definitely are not. These approaches have been of no avail and have led this nation nowhere, most emphatically not to the house of peace. I cannot understand how you can speak of them as sensitive and sensible.”

  “Trust me,” he says. “I am in the business of conflict resolution, and I spend a lot of my time mediating between warring groups. Easily hurt, people here carry with them egos more grandiose than any you’ve encountered anywhere else. The result is that everyone reacts in a self-centered way to every situation. That’s what I am talking about when I say they are sensitive.”

  She waits in the futile hope of further clarification. When none is forthcoming, she asks, “What are we waiting for?”

  “We’re waiting for the armed escort.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Somewhere in the back garden.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Chewing a couple of morsels of qaat.”

  “Even the two that are in their preteens?”

  “Every one of them is a chewer.”

  He might be talking about a heroin addict needing his daily fix. Her hand instinctively moves to sound the horn, but she does not, as she realizes that in readiness for this eventuality, Zaak is leaning forward to prevent her doing so.

  “Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  Apprehensive, she asks, “By any chance, are you afraid of what the armed youths might do if you order them around?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Please correct me if I am wrong.”

  “We’re hostages to their guns, that’s true.”

  “They put the guns to your heads whenever they want to blackmail you into granting them more concessions than you are prepared to grant them?”

  Zaak nods his head in agreement, adding, “We do their will, bribe them with qaat, pay them extravagant bonuses, and humor them as best as we can. With death being near, as close as their fingers are to their trigger guards, we value our life and appreciate every second of it.”

  “What a sad spectacle,” she says.

  When he does not react to her throwaway remark, her thoughts move on, dwelling for a few moments on her personal tragedy. She tells herself that when an old person dies, you accept it, reasoning that in all likelihood his or her time has come. That is not the case, however, if a nine-year-old full of life and laughter drowns. This is because you sense deep within you that the boy’s time has not come and that calamity has come a-calling. No wonder that at first she felt suicidal and then homicidal the day she learned of Dalmar’s death.

  Her sorrows, because of the tragic loss with which she has lived up to now, devolve into a moment of intense injudiciousness. She asks, “Can’t we go by ourselves?”

  “Not without armed escort.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it is not done.”

  “How far are we from the family house?”

  “Pretty far.”

  “What about Hotel Shamac?”

  “That is even farther.”

  She unmoors herself from whatever is going on in the truck, whose engine is not running because he has not switched the ignition on, and from the conversation that is going nowhere and says, “What a travesty!”

  After an uneasy silence, he says, “What travesty?”

  “That because life is so precious, we need a couple of boys in their preteens bearing guns to protect us?” She pauses, then adds, “Do you know I could dispossess them of their weapons as easily as I could chase a chicken away from the grains at which it is pecking?”

  “They are tough, these boys.”

  “Have you seen them in action?”

  “I won’t want to see them in action.”

  “I bet you’ll wet your pants, come to that.”

  “Our lives are less precious than a handgun or the vehicle we are driving,” he says. “If we hire armed escort, it is because we do not want to die at the hand of other armed gangs more interested in the four-wheel-drive truck than they are in who we are, what our clan affiliations are. To those whose services we hire, pay salaries to, humor, bribe, we are worth more alive than dead, but to all armed thugs, we are worth more dead than alive. Tell me what is so perverse about this line of reasoning?”

  She stares at him, her chin raised, jaws clenched, eyes burning with her unengaged rage. Not an iota of empathy informs her hard look; if anything, she does not wish to admit that he has a point. In her surreptitious glance in his direction, she means to convey her fearlessness, despite her altered situation, brought up by his unmitigated cruelty, both when they separated as putative spouses and since her arrival here as his guest. From the way she is looking at him, you might think that she is giving him notice: that she will eventually do away with him, his deceits, and double-talk, as if she intends him to serve as a lesson to all the betrayers of our unearned trust. In her sober moments, when she does not give in to her giant rage or her disapproval of all forms of inactivity, she knows that there is no wisdom in rushing, and no mileage in employing shotgun approaches; these will hardly help her in her desire to stay on top of things or ultimately assure her of becoming a winner.

  “Please, let’s get going,” she says.

  He looks expectantly in the direction of where he expects the armed youths to come from, but he just shakes his head, saying nothing.

  She tells herself that she must go past the reach of his meanness to stay alive and unharmed. Even so, she cannot help questioning herself anew if her genuine diffidence might bring up the rear of more fatal fears that are yet to manifest their grip on her imagination. In other
words, what will happen when, like a child in whose imagination fear has started to dwell, her sleep marks her as disturbed, with bugbears dominating everywhere she turns, and she is wakeful. She surprises herself by speaking the command for which she too has not been prepared: “Can we go? We’ve waited long enough.”

  Zaak’s response is to take a good hold of the wheel. Appearing lost, he is agitated and more like someone who does not know how to drive. He shifts in his seat, cursing under his breath, and moves backward, rubbing his bum on the seat the way urchins might wipe their hind-parts when they have no toilet paper or water to wash. His apparent discomfort puts her in mind of many a traitor soon after hearing the charges of his treason. She imagines him speaking as though she can deliver him from all blame. In fact, that is what he does, more or less.

  He says, “It bears repeating that you are most welcome to stay here. It bears reiterating too that since there is no chance in hell for you to recover the family property from the warlord without a fight, it would be ill advised for us to go there before we make adequate preparations.”

  She says, “I just want to acquaint myself with the area of the city in which our upmarket family property is located, that’s all.”

  “I’ve noticed that you haven’t mentioned even once the other family property in Via Roma, in which we all lived and in which you and I grew up? Why?”

  “Because Mother says that every building in Via Roma has been razed to the ground in the fierce fighting between StrongmanNorth and StrongmanSouth in the early years of the civil war,” she explains. “Is this borne out by what you know or have seen?”

  “What do we do after we’ve parked a hundred or so meters away so the family living in the property cannot see us or link us to any conspiracy?” he asks.

  “I have no intention of announcing my presence.”

  “I say we need to plan it together, you and I.”

  “Point taken,” she says, knowing that she will not involve him in any of her doings until she has worked out all the configurations of how, where, and when to act on her plan.

  “I insist on this.”

  “Can we get a move on, please?” she says impatiently. Then she surprises the two of them by sounding the horn, pressing it gently once, then harder, and then much louder and continuously until its sound brings the youths running and panting unhealthily. They arrive, with their guns hoisted above their heads, a couple of them as good as naked and a third stumbling, because of being trapped in his sarong, now loose and around his ankles. Ready for action, their weapons poised, with only one of them lying prone in imitation of some movie or other he has seen, moving his gun this and that way, deciding where to aim or who to shoot. Even the driver is there, his cheeks as full as a camel busy chewing, his lips traced with greenish foam, shading his eyes from the harsh sun. Zaak waves the driver off, indicating that he does not need his services. The expression on the driver’s face brightens. He picks his nose liberally, and he stalks away, heavy-footed but also eager.

  Cambara says to Zaak, “Why don’t you want him to drive us to and back from the house and the hotel? It’ll be a lot easier, quicker, and perhaps also safer for all concerned.”

  “Because he is unhealthily inquisitive.”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “It matters to me.”

  Finally, Zaak sits up, preparing to drive, his back ramrod straight, and his lips atremble. Maybe he is reciting a brief prayer between switching the ignition on, engaging a gear, and moving on. His breathing strikes Cambara as being bothered, and his posture rigid as that of a pupil taking a test he is certain to fail. Only then does the memory come back to her that he is an awful driver. She remembers how he had to resit the oral and the driving tests several times, managing to pass on his sixth attempt. He sets about his driving with the care of a cattle farmer guiding the erection of a bull into a cow not yet in heat. He cries Bismillah twice before instructing the armed youths to get in, guns, qaat, and all.

  Then Zaak turns the key in the ignition a few times before the engine comes to life, coughing, farting, sputtering cold wind, and spurting white smoke out of the exhaust pipe. He applies more pressure on the accelerator pedal than need be, and this jars Cambara’s nerves, irritating her. Again, it takes him several attempts before engaging the clutch. But because he misjudges the biting point of the clutch and removes his foot from the brake, the engine stalls. He curses, starts the engine once more, places his foot heavily on the accelerator prior to engaging the clutch, and the vehicle jerks out of control.

  Cambara sits up, and so do the armed youths. They all shift in their seats, anxious-looking, helpless, and not knowing what to do or say to Zaak, who, in his desire to prove his worth, is doing all he can to impress Cambara and failing.

  Everyone hears the voice of a man, the driver, who is saying, “Do you want me to come and drive, Zaak? I do not mind, really I do not.”

  Cambara looks out of the window, amused, her gaze falling on the driver, who is pulling his sarong up with his left hand and whose eyes are red and almost popping with exhaustion, presumably from lack of sleep. In her recall of her dream the night before, during her brief, jet-lagged sleep, she remembers the heavy downpour, remembers running, naked and free, among the fillies on a sandy beach, the sky tropical blue, her shoeless feet feeling tickled and she laughing in the way the happy and the young do. After a while, Cambara wakes from her daydream to the noisy reality of Zaak rudely dismissing the driver, to whom he says, “Go back to your chewing, and we’ll see you here in less than an hour.”

  She keeps whatever thoughts that come to her to herself, waits, and then watches as Zaak starts the engine yet again. This time, however, smooth as new oil, he gets the biting point of the clutch right and engages it without the engine stalling or disconcertingly jerking out of his authority. She tells herself that being around Zaak, being humiliated and derided, may become the death of her sooner than the bullet from a gun erroneously going off. To be sure, she does not wish to court danger, nor does she get a kick out of riding with boys in their preteens armed with an AK-47.

  It is when she has sat back, starting to destress, that she realizes that the foot brake cannot perform the function Zaak has assigned to it, and the clutch is in fact not an accelerator. Eventually, his foot controls fail him just as before, with too little fuel reaching the engine, which almost cuts off but does not, or too much fuel and the truck surging forward. It is when he mistakes the foot brake for the accelerator that the engine speed does not match the road’s, then, all of a sudden, he changes down a gear, then another, annoyingly picking up such a velocity that Zaak has no idea what to do and then brakes so abruptly they drive into a ditch and stop. One of the two boys, sitting forward, whose AK-47 trigger guard is off, pulls at it unwittingly, shooting volleys and emptying them into the roof. The explosion in the confined space of the motorcar is so close it feels as if a grenade has gone off. Gathering her wits about her, she sees Zaak, mouth gaping open in shock, sitting stock still as if frozen in fright, but she is alert to the imminent peril in the shape of a couple of armed youths who arrive on the scene from nowhere and who watch from the safety of the wall covering them. Cambara has the calm to inquire if anyone is hurt. No man can find his tongue; all is quiet. Cambara, in the meantime, turns round to check for herself and then figures out that, even though every one is startled, no one has suffered any visible harm.

  It is then that a rank odor emanating from within the vehicle insinuates itself into the immense silence. Cambara is able to isolate the source of the putrid stench in no time, identifying its emitter: a boy in the back row who, out of embarrassment, holds down his head, cradling it in his hands. Apparently, the boy has fouled himself out of fright. She is for once undecided what to do, not that she knows what there is to say. It is too far for her to reach out to the boy, touch him, assure him that there is nothing to be ashamed of; too inconvenient to step out of the truck, go round and get back in, and embrace the boy. S
he looks away, her sense of discretion prevailing. Likewise, the older armed youths, who, covering their mouths and noses with their hands, surprisingly to Cambara, hold their tongues. However, the unfortunate boy’s age-mates are rip-roaringly laughing, pointing their fingers at the unlucky boy, one of them calling him Xaar Fakay, meaning “ShitLoose.”

  Cambara waits for Zaak to move before acting on the instinct to intervene, interceding with the bigger boys to desist from bullying the hapless boy, whom, now that she has had a good look, she refers to as Tima Xariir, for his dark, silky, brilliantined hair. However, Cambara is helpless in the face of this new challenge, because it is one thing to make a fuss over the waste of one’s child; it is altogether another thing to clean up the mess of a preteen boy, armed, potentially unruly, and likely to pose a problem later.

  Zaak, for his part, does not respond to SilkHair’s predicament as a grown man might. Angry and showing no empathy, he puckers his face, an indication that the odor has had more of an effect on him than it might on a woman who has dealt with a baby’s excreta. In her mind, Cambara links this incident to the scene earlier yesterday when, being most unkind, he told her, “Grow up, woman.” Now she feels like saying the same thing to him, to behave as an adult woman might. Zaak says, “Get out and walk.”

  The boy raises his head, his eyes popping out, as if he were a goat a slaughterer has readied to kill. No one says anything as SilkHair works out how to get out of where he is without drawing more derision from his mates, knowing that the waste will have run down the legs of his sarong and will have soiled his nether regions too.

  Cambara surprises everyone by saying, “There is nothing unnatural about what the boy has done, and I want him to stay in the truck.”

  “No one wants him to remain,” Zaak says.

  There is uncomfortable silence all around.

  “I would like him to,” she says.

  Zaak is ill at ease, not certain how to react.

  Cambara says, “Or else I’ll go with him then.”