Knots

by Nuruddin Farah

  Cambara decides she is bearing witness to the birth of a terrible ugliness, the start of a gradual falling apart of a giant man who is otherwise famous, from what she has heard, for his inner strength. The swelling of his face puts her in mind of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, playing the role of Kurtz, a highly disturbed former military officer gone madder and madder with insatiable greed who builds, neurotically, a castle of bones out of the brutal massacres of humans. She thinks Bile is caving in, his nihilistic self-assessments confronting the evil manifestations of the darker side of the Somali character in these troubled times. Now silent, he gives the impression of being self-contained, a noble man refusing to share his internal torments with a woman barely known to him. Why pretend to be the willing host of this wretchedness?

  Why hasn’t he consulted a doctor? Why hasn’t he left the country if he is of the view that there are no other doctors good enough to diagnose his condition? Unless he assumes there is a way of tapping a mysterious underlife in the darkness in which he has dwelled? Maybe something worse than she can ever know is the matter with him. In any case, what can she do? Can she help him come out of the land closed off in a faraway country of profound depression?

  There are huge lacks in both of them, she decides. A pity she does not know him well, does not know if he has contemplated suicide. Based on a bottle of pills she is not quite sure she remembers seeing somewhere in one of the rooms, she has her suspicions that this is what he has tried to do. Her mother will tell her, perhaps rightly, that she must not take on someone else’s problems. Why must she fall for problem men? But Bile is not a problem man; he is a solution man. To discourage her, her mother will remind her of how Zaak and Wardi battened on her until she was no longer of use to them. See how ungrateful they proved themselves to be; see how they struck out on their own without a care in the world for her feelings. Won’t Bile do the same? What guarantees do you have that he will not?

  He mumbles something as she finally frees her hand from his clasp. “Are you okay?” she asks, when he chokes on his words.

  Grinning, his eyes alight, he says, “It is like blaming your feather mattress for your bedsores.” Then he looks at her cockily, staring at her in a way that surprises her. “Like blaming your feather mattress for your bedsores. Can you imagine?”

  A premonition, overwhelming in its intensity, comes suddenly in the form of an inner warning voice that advises her not to think of him as an insane man speaking wisdom but as a man gradually recovering his senses. The voice suggests that she must not shun him but remain on her guard.

  He sits up and, bringing to bear a lighthearted feeling on his bodily movements, wills himself first to look at Cambara in as friendly a way as he can muster, and then grins. For her. After which, he puts a great deal of purpose into placing the book he has been trying to read aside, managing this simple act with the slowness of a person with Down’s syndrome attempting to speak a complicated thought. Bile’s eyes dim after a moment, his features darken with dissonant intimations, and his lips move with the terrible exertion of someone emerging out of an ungodly grouse. With his brooding mood seemingly rawer than when she arrived, Cambara fears that he will take her along with him into a world of despair. He rises to his feet and tries a step, hesitates, half tumbles over, then straightens his body, not quite as straight as a bow. His expression is wooden, his eyes as heavy as lead. He finally gives up and lowers his body back into the couch. He sighs. The eerie quality of his unspeaking stare causes her much worry.

  He says, “Blame your bedsores on the mattress.”

  “What are you saying?” she asks.

  But he does not answer. There is something disturbingly haunting about the diffuseness of his eyes, as if they are wrestling with an unidentified host of negative forces of unknown origin. At this point, she asks herself if Dajaal, who may have known of Bile’s state of physical and mental deterioration, has set her up. But why? Is he throwing her a challenge? See how you fare—you who have a liking for difficult tasks, stray boys with no parents, and armed youths with no future. Or is Dajaal intimating, in his own way, that she is somehow the cause of Bile’s torment and that it is time she dealt with it?

  “Come,” she says.

  “Where?”

  “A shower will do you a lot of good.”

  He takes his time to wrap himself with the bathrobe, and, discouraging her from treating him like an invalid anymore, he stands up, first swaying a little and eventually standing upright before doddering toward the bathroom.

  “Do you need any help?” she says to his back.

  He stops walking and, nodding, mumbles a phrase that sounds to Cambara like “Yes, please.” She hears him not with her ears but with her heart.

  “The trousers,” he says, pronouncing the word as if it has more consonants. “My legs are too weak,” he adds. “My hands too.”

  It takes several clumsy efforts for her to help him remove his trousers, at one point the two of them nearly falling into a heap. Then, despite the pervasive odor, she remains with him until she runs the water and he has had a douche. Then she finds and then passes him a clean towel, a pair of slip-ons, a T-shirt, and a sarong.

  She leads him by the hand to his bedroom. The bed looks slept in, the room stuffy. She opens the windows to let in air. After she has tucked him in, she returns to the bathroom to soak his soiled clothes. In the kitchen, she clears space and finds enough ingredients to prepare a vegetable consommé. When she hears him mumbling a few words, maybe calling to her, she finds a bowl and goes to feed him. Again she says, “Good for you,” giving him spoonfuls of it. On her way out of the room, she takes interest in the photographs decorating the walls: of two girls, one of them pretty and ordinary looking, the other a Down’s syndrome, and of an older woman, who shares family resemblance with Bile. Then back to the bathroom to soap his dirty clothes, pouring on them water close to boiling, almost burning herself when she first puts her hand in.

  It bothers her that she cannot decide what to do next. There is no shortage of people to ring up: Dajaal, Seamus, Kiin, Farxia—the only medical doctor, albeit a gynecologist, only she doesn’t recall taking her mobile number.

  Back in the bedroom, she watches him eat his soup. The smell of the sick; the clothes worn night and day; pairs of socks dropped on the floor and not picked up—these convince her to take charge, the urge turning into a commitment. Now she remembers Seamus or Dajaal saying that Bile has good and bad days.

  She isn’t certain if she is imagining it or if Seamus has said that when Bile’s days are bad, they are so bad, like the darkness of winter descending on the soil of Bile’s mind, that nothing will grow on such a soil. If good, the days are bright; the sun shines and shines all the time. If this is his bad, bad day, will she get to see his good day?

  “I’ve been meaning to ask?” he says.

  “Please,” she encourages him.

  “Doesn’t it feel lonely?”

  How bizarre: a man speaking in non sequiturs.

  “Doesn’t what feel lonely?”

  “Doesn’t a veil make the wearer feel lonely?”

  Cambara can’t think of an answer.

  Again a question. “You know what?” he says.

  “Tell me,” she encourages him.

  “Every virtue is its own reward.”

  Then silence, as total as that of a classroom in which matriculants are writing their finals. Cambara wonders if grave changes are in store for her, and she is nervous, like a teenager in love for the first time. She is in a twitter, because she has met Bile on his home ground and has proven herself worthy of his trust. She hopes to deal with his and her problems with the subtlety of a highly professional puppeteer controlling her marionettes with the help of invisible wires.

  Then she phones Dajaal. “Please pick me up in about an hour and a half.”

  “How is Bile?”

  “He is okay.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Bile’s secret, which is how Cambara w
ants to think of his indisposition, will be safe with her, for she has no wish to speak of it to anyone, neither to Seamus nor to Dajaal. She assumes that given Bile’s sense of discretion—why does she always tend to believe in her heart that she knows him when she doesn’t—he may not approve of her broadcasting his bodily aberrations to his close friends and sundry acquaintances. At least, from the time she spent with him, she got the impression that he is a discreet man.

  When she thinks that Dajaal has left to pick her up, she rings Seamus to ask him what the two boys, her charges, are up to and when he, Seamus, is likely to return to the apartment. When Seamus says that he won’t be there until early evening, if not much later, and that, in any case, he will bring along a takeaway and that she needn’t worry herself about Gacal and SilkHair, for they are being kept purposefully busy, she gets down to the business of ridding the apartment and herself of the rank odor. She strives to work as quietly as possible so Bile might find shelter in the sleep of his embarrassment. She even considers disconnecting her mobile and the landline to make sure that no ringing phones disturb him. On second thought, she abandons the idea as being too drastic a measure.

  She scrubs the floors of the bathroom and then has a long, very hot shower herself before changing into the first outfit she lays her hands on, an ill-fitting pair of baggies and a matching top—she hopes they are Bile’s—before washing her own clothes to get rid of the intrusive smell. The stench is so pervasive that not only has it stuck to her body, escorting her everywhere, but it has also started to reside in her nostrils, as if permanently glued to the hair growing there. She washes her own clothes, then she bolts the bathroom door from the inside and loads the wet clothes into the drying machine, praying that Bile does not wake up, need the bathroom, since this appears to be the only one, and find her in his pajamas, dressed like a dog’s dinner. Moreover, part of her is fearful that he may have misunderstood her honorable right-minded actions. But what are they, these respectable intentions? What are her designs, since she must have some?

  As she listens to the thudding, rhythmic sound of the drying machine, she returns, in memory, to the first few days spent at Zaak’s as a guest, and she cannot help comparing her disapproval then, exposed as she was to Zaak’s malodorous condition, to her attitude today, which, on the face of it, appears more tolerant. She wonders if she has found Zaak’s evil-smelling mouth disturbing because it did not connect her in any way to one of her former states: that of mother to a sweet young boy and that of daughter to a bedridden father so sick the last few months of his life that he would occasionally wet his bed and soil his clothes. That in her mind she prefers referring to the mishap involving Bile as a bodily aberration and seems not to be highly disturbed by it can only indicate that she is inclined to suffer it without it getting under her skin the way Zaak did. Anyhow, how does it happen that in less than a fortnight she has had the fortune or misfortune to meet two men, one of them with a God-almighty BO that you can’t help avoiding, the other smeared with his waste, like some tribal dancer painted with dung?

  Apropos of this, she quotes to herself the Somali wisdom that if feces were wealth, everybody would call it by a different name. She reasons that she is in all likelihood more charitable toward Bile because of his kindness to her. If she is intolerant of Zaak and cannot endure his smelly presence, it is simply because he has been uncompromising and been beastly toward her.

  She sits on the toilet, with the lid down, as much for the comfort of resting her exhausted bones as for the fact that it might afford her a pause to make sure that she does not overreach herself. Then she resolves to hold herself in check and not to lament the sad truth that she has not been alone with her thoughts since getting to Mogadiscio, what with the constant interferences and external forces that have seldom allowed her to concentrate her mind wholly on herself. Rushing here, rushing there, a light makeup before an all-woman’s party, run, and run, bone tired. Granted, where in Toronto, she might entertain an idea for its own sake, indulge herself to her heart’s content, and, if she is of a mind, unplug her phone, take a break from it all, and lie fallow like the land of a farm resting, here it has not been possible for her to lead a private existence. Always in some car, being ferried there and back; constantly in the sight of a gun, never mind if it is friendly; always under someone’s constant supervision purportedly for her safety; sentries at the gate, either granting or denying her entry; armed youths out to ensnare her. How annoying that her movements in this city are restricted.

  Home is Mogadiscio, home from Toronto, but the question is: Is she the homing pigeon among the cats, or has the cat been put among the pigeons to flutter their dovecotes? No doubt, her presence has brought a number of situations to a head and has somehow stimulated sufficient interest in a handful of persons who have made a number of changes, many of them for the better. The way Cambara sees it, she has prompted Kiin to set things in motion with the help of the Women’s Network, Zaak having to all intents and purposes shown her that he wouldn’t give her a hand. Bile has few equals, in that he has stepped in, prodding Dajaal into action, without her ever soliciting his intervention. And Dajaal has delivered: He helped to repossess the property but not before Kiin and Farxia conspired to rid it of Jiijo, every one of them risking their lives. In the meantime, Seamus too has joined in, most likely at Bile’s suggestion. What more can she want?

  She gets to her feet, pulls the door of the drying machine open to determine if her clothes are now sufficiently dry for her to wear them. They are. Scarcely has she taken them out when another of her knee-jerk reminiscences deposits her at the door to yet another memory: that of her cooking for Zaak’s militiamen. She stops in midmotion, telling herself that feeding is one of the most ancient strategies women have employed to cope with the restlessness caused by men’s overabundance of testosterone; feeding them is one way of disempowering them, even if for a period of brief duration. Women have fallen back repeatedly on making men ingest the foods they have cooked and “bewitched” them, in this way pacifying their conjugal cohorts’ agitated nerves. It is not surprising how, in many languages—Somali included—the notion of eating is interchangeable with lovemaking.

  She dwells in an animated suspension, neither managing to start putting on her clothes, which although not completely dry are wearable, nor to embark on another activity. One thought leads to another, and she is telling herself that there is no doubt in her mind that if fighting off the militiamen on the day she met Dajaal and Bile is seen as the first time fortune smiled in her favor so as to make things work to her advantage, then cooking for Zaak’s militiamen when she did, mollifying and therefore moderating their behavior, was the second most important step. Moreover, she will never forget the youths’ initial shock of discovering that chopping off a chicken’s head with the intention of lunching on it, pulling its viscera out in one go, and plucking its feathers after boiling it are no easier matter than putting your finger on the trigger of an AK-47 and killing a human being.

  Not sure that she has heard a tapping on the door, she listens for it a second time, but nothing happens. Then she hears the sound of the key turning in the apartment door, and she ceases all movement, waiting for the person who is now indoors to identify himself before coming out of the bathroom and making her appearance.

  “It is me, Seamus,” the voice says.

  “I am in the bathroom,” she lets him know.

  Then she takes off the borrowed clothes she has been wearing and puts on her own, even if a bit damp in the armpits or the nether regions in which some moisture has gathered. She comes out, her hands busy smoothing the creases.

  Maybe there is no basis for her supposition that Dajaal is trying to avoid her and has, instead, persuaded Seamus to replace her. To ascertain if this is the case, she says, “I rang Dajaal to come get me.”

  “There has been a small security problem,” Seamus explains. “Dajaal has dropped me off and gone back to deal with it urgently. Something to do with a ki
nsman of Gudcur’s who’s turned up armed at one of the checkpoints leading to your family property. One of Qasiir’s boys shot the kinsman dead point-blank. Dajaal is organizing both the removal of the corpse and the burial before nightfall.”

  In her mind, she pushes all that has to do with skirmishes and gunfights aside, because she sees these armed combats as belonging to a realm different from her domain. And now that she is calmer and feels less compelled to deal with emergencies resulting from Bile’s affliction, cleaning up the mess after him and coping with his needs, she takes fresh notice of things. How well-appointed the apartment is; what a refined handiwork, presumably Seamus’s, from what Kiin has informed her.

  “When will this insecurity end?”

  “Not for a good while yet,” Seamus says.

  “You seem unfazed. How do you manage?”

  “Haven’t I told you that I am from Belfast?”

  “Even so, this is Mogadiscio. Remember that.”

  “So. What if it is?”

  There is an awkward silence.

  “Tea?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Seamus goes into the kitchen to make it. She joins him there just about. She stands facing him, her back leaning against the doorjamb, her legs splayed. She finds the kitchen pleasantly kitted with all the gadgets you need to produce a decent meal. She deems it slightly impolite to ask, but she suspects that Seamus is the factotum running this ménage, the efficient handyman with the practical know-how, the cook, the repairman when the generator packs up. Typical of a Somali to be the beneficiary of “Euro largesse.” The sad truth is that when death comes baying at the gates in the form of perennial famines, the Somali appeals to the Euro sense of humanity and asks to be fed. However, in defense of Bile, again from what Kiin has told her, he led a very active life before he became indisposed. A doctor in charge of a refuge. Not many of them about.

  “Tea with biscuits in the living room?”