“But why, Raaxo dearest?” Cambara asks.
“Cambo dearest, because I wanted to apprise the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi of Gacal’s situation and to inveigle them to issue a replacement for his American passport so he may return to Duluth, if the idea takes his fancy.”
“Any chance of this happening?”
“To this end,” Raxma says, “I have brought with me affidavits signed by the Duluth police chief, another by a congressman, and a third by the headmaster at the school in Duluth Gacal went to, all of them attesting to Gacal’s identity and that of the woman otherwise known as the Unidentified Woman.”
“What did the consular officer say?”
“In a letter that I am carrying,” Raxma says, “the consular officer at the embassy invites Gacal for an interview in which the boy will be allowed to present his own case.”
“But that’s wonderful,” Cambara says.
Just then, Arda drags Cambara away and, for some bizarre unexplained reason, insists that her daughter submit herself to a thorough physical examination, more or less in public, one to be conducted under Farxia’s astute supervision. They all wait in the anteroom to her clinic, anxiously silent like patients at a dentist’s, as if in pain. After a few minutes, Farxia returns and she seems pleased with the result as she goes to where Arda, Bile, Kiin, Raxma, and the Unidentified Woman are all sitting, worried stiff. Elated, Farxia shows them a single printer-generated sheet, the kind that has perforations at the edges.
Joyous, Arda ululates, “Didn’t I always say so?”
The sheet with the mysterious information about Cambara looks a bit more tattered now that it has been handled by several persons. It is straight in some edges and cut crookedly in some corners; it is passed from hand to hand. When everyone in the anteroom is satisfied, Arda calls to Bile, who is permitted to see the diagnosis.
Bile’s verdict. “A clean bill of health.”
“What do you know?” says Raxma sarcastically.
“My mother is nuts,” says Cambara.
Then Cambara wakes up.
Bile says to Cambara, “I suggest we take a break.”
It is past midday the following day, and Cambara, Gacal, SilkHair, and Bile are upstairs in the en suite bedroom, rehearsing. They are here because Seamus hasn’t finished the much-needed carpentry and joinery work on the stage, and he has requested they find an alternative temporary place until the day after tomorrow, when he hopes to be done. Cambara has chosen the room farthest from where Seamus is hammering away with unprecedented fastidiousness. It is the only almost-habitable room in the house, the others being no better than dumps. But neither Gacal nor SilkHair has minded sleeping downstairs, since they have had the run of the entire house except for Cambara’s room, which is under lock and key.
They’ve been rehearsing nonstop several hours every day—from soon after eight in the morning, following a quick breakfast, until the lunch hour, after which they take a brief break, no siesta, and then resume work, going over the text again and again. A perfectionist, Cambara feels there is still a lot of rehearsing to go through. Cambara is dead beat. To the trained eye of Bile, who takes pride in interpreting the delightful expressions on the face of the woman whom he adores, she looks battle weary.
It’s become de rigueur, in the last couple of days, for Cambara and Bile to spend several hours with each other, with Cambara directing and occasionally rewriting and Bile, Gacal, and SilkHair rehearsing and learning their lines. At times, when Cambara invites them, they are joined by others, including Dajaal, Qasiir, and others who make walk-on cameo appearances as part of the crowd in a village, speechlessly watching as the principal protagonists act out their roles per Cambara’s set plan. Plainly told, the latest version of the play is about an eagle raised from babyhood among chickens. He is made to fend for his food by pecking on the ground, in the dust—and therefore he thinks of himself as a chicken. A chicken who is the eagle’s peer and playmate is hell-bent on sabotaging the idea of the eagle’s finding his wings and flying, so to speak. The farmer who found the eagle several years earlier and who didn’t mind the bird’s cohabiting with the chickens now wants to retrain the eagle so he will become what he has never been—a bird able to fly. Cambara, in her rewrite of the original folktale from Ghana, has altered its drift—from giving a moral message, as folktales are wont to do, to being intense, provocative, complex, and a touch modernist.
“Time to take a break,” Bile advises when he realizes that Cambara is not getting her way with the boys. Tired and hungry, they are tetchy, their back talk moody. She is exhausted too; so is he.
Although Cambara is discreetly aware of Bile training his keen eyes on her, she does not capitulate until the sharpness of his overpowering probe mixes with her desire to be alone with him in a room, not doing anything extraordinary, not even loving—just cuddling, snoozing. The look in her gaze softens a little under the scrutiny of his stare and a door to her heart opens, albeit in a tentative way. How marvelous to live close to someone whom you can wholly trust, whose companionship is never in doubt. But despite her exhausted state, in spite of the fact that her eyes are narrowing like the shutters of a shop at closing time, Cambara does not luxuriate in the warmth and affection she feels toward Bile, instead remembering the anger that has precipitated her arrival in the civil war city—her husband’s treacherous behavior, which led to Dalmar’s death and brought about her leaving him and Toronto to reinvent her place in the world. She wishes she could reciprocate Bile’s charismatic advances, taken as she is with his calm approach to matters of the heart, never pushing, always concurring to withdraw at the slightest hint of bother on her side, or a change in her mood or perspective. She is cautious, as women must always be. Nor does she want to offer the impression of being too forward. She can’t help being mindful of how first commitments lead one to a plateau of high expectations, only to abandon one in yet another snare. She would do well to pretend, if need be, that she is operating within the boundaries of tradition and remain within the parameters of acceptable behavior in the presence of Dajaal, Kiin, Gacal, and SilkHair. Seamus, she tells herself, is a person apart, a man in his own category, when one thinks of him in the context of local convention. Nothing she might do would ever disconcert him; he is a seen-it-all, done-it-all Irishman. All the same, it will not do for her to acquit herself with the deliberate calmness of a hard-to-get, difficult-to-know, impossible-to-love woman.
In her mind, she is staring at a door. Which key might open it to help her interpret the dream earlier? Was it a dream full of prophetic craving, in that it was very concrete—her mum visiting, the play brought to the stage, Raxma coming, bearing affidavits from the police chief in Duluth and calling at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, where she arranged for an interview with Gacal? Hopes raised and then dashed are a disaster. Must she interpret the dream as being no different from the daily, weekly, or monthly horoscopes one reads in the newspapers and magazines? She feels dizzy; the room she is in roams; she has no idea where she is and with whom until Bile speaks. Alas, she can’t follow what he is saying—she is engaged with her worries.
He is most attentive to her, his bodily postures very deferential, quiet as a monk in a monastery at prayer time, highly indiscreet. His physical closeness helps her relive the telling pleasantness of their moments spent together, just as the world keeps speedily retreating. Imagine a world with Bile in it, but with no Dajaal. It is a kind of marriage, Bile’s dependency on Dajaal, and Dajaal’s protectiveness of his—for lack of a better word—employer. But when you work Seamus into this symbiosis, then you have problems of a different nature. She doesn’t know if a relationship with Bile on his own, without Dajaal and without Seamus, will ever be feasible.
In Somalia, she thinks, one does not marry an individual; one marries a family, whose constituent units are hardly salutary in their symbiotic rapport with the couple, such is their economic interdependence. A family organized around blood is different from one built around the idea that circumstance
s determine its formation. She is not sure that she will manage to insinuate herself without strain into the ménage à trois. Somebody has to give, but who? Talk of hatching chickens, she muses, in the menacing vicinity of eagles about to prey on the eggs just laid.
She remembers committing several minutes to studying the photographs on the walls of Bile’s apartment the one and only time she was there: photographs of Raasta just born; of Makka, wrapped up in a blanket, waiting to be found; of Bile, holding one, then the other; of The Refuge soon after it was established; of Seamus, with grease up to his elbows, fixing a generator; of Seamus with Bile, Raasta, and Makka; with Raasta and Shanta. No pictures of Dajaal and none of Shanta, save in the first two years following Raasta’s birth. None of her husband, Faahiye.
Bile’s mobile phone rings. He listens briefly, saying “Yes” twice and then announcing, “Lunch is on its way; it will be delivered soon. From Kiin’s kitchen, with her kind compliments.”
The monotony of work, work, and more work is broken with the pleasant arrival of Kiin, who delivers the lunch herself—a plain meal of fresh fruit, several large bottles of mineral water, and lots of lemon for the fish dish. Cambara has the pleasant sensation that Kiin has brought something with the lunch—a bit of news, maybe some gossip about Zaak, who knows? It amuses her to remember a quip ascribed to Norman Mailer, who is rumored to have said he couldn’t vote for a man who hadn’t the balls to cheat on his wife. Is Zaak capable of stirring a one-liner to life so others would repeat it?
“You and Bile are always working,” Kiin says in a tone of voice that has a bit of why-don’t-you-include-me envy in it. She serves Gacal and SilkHair, who need no encouragement from anyone to leave the adults to their wearisome talk. They take themselves as far away as they can, within reason.
“There is a role for you to play, Kiin,” Cambara says, accepting the plate of food that Kiin is offering her. She mumbles her thanks, and goes on, “The main female protagonist in my play has good lines, and I am sure that you will do justice to them, even though you have never acted in a play. Do you wish to consider it?”
“I haven’t the time,” Kiin says, dishing a small portion of fish and salad for Bile, because he has indicated his small appetite by holding his middle and forefingers together just as she is doling out his share. “I am a single mother having to fight my in-laws daily for the custody of my two daughters, a manager of a hotel, and an active member of the network. When will I have the time for such a luxury—to learn the lines of a character in a play, rehearse repeatedly with you until I get them right?”
Cambara and Bile eat in silence, but they soon pay compliments to the chef and heartfelt thanks to Kiin. Several images from Cambara’s dream at dawn flash through her mind, and at one point she catches herself smiling when she revisits the scene at Farxia’s clinic What was that all about? A hidden reference to the lies mother and daughter told about Cambara being infibulated? What was the point of her being examined physically, and the result being passed on like gossip from one person to another?
Kiin says, “I’ve had a visitor today.”
Neither Bile nor Cambara shows much keenness about this statement, assuming it to be an everyday thing. They do not inquire into the identity of the caller or the nature of the visit.
But when, elaborating, Kiin explains that the woman who came to the hotel earlier today said she wanted to talk to one Raaxo Abduraxman, Cambara sits up, jolted out of her inattention. Kiin then remarks, “I knew that there was something unusual about the woman as soon as she gave that sequence of the names.”
Bile starts to display a little more curiosity—at the mention of the two names, he recalls that he has heard something vaguely to do with a family tragedy. It is nothing specific and about no one whom he has known or met. No matter how hard he overworks his exhausted brain, no clue presents itself. He also finds it curious that Cambara is silent, in the way of someone who knows the answer to a puzzle but won’t speak it, so as not to spoil it for the others.
Bile asks Kiin, “What’s unusual about a woman looking for someone called Raaxo Abduraxman? Do you know such a person?”
Kiin replies, “No such person exists.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know Raaxo to be the abbreviated version of the name of Cambara’s and my mutual friend Raxma, and I know Abduraxman to be Cambara’s father’s name.”
“What did you think then?”
“It’s like a pseudonym, I thought of an author writing and not keeping his writing in a drawer but publishing it,” Kiin says. “I thought that someone is telling me something while keeping it partially hidden from me. She was not a threat of any sort—a small woman, all skin and bone, haggard as hell and in someone’s hand-me-downs, but not the begging kind. She had elegance to her careworn aspect, has known better days, I could tell, and was certain that all would be well with her and her world shortly if only she could get to this Raaxo Abduraxman. When I pressed her to tell me how she came by the name and she replied that it had been on the radio, I remembered vague mentions, of Raxma telling and not telling about Gacal and his mom, and of Cambara speculating about Gacal, but not getting me involved in the search for her.”
“What did you do?”
“She is at the hotel, in your room, as it happens, most probably sleeping off a year of bedbugs, creaky mattresses, and other discomforts,” Kiin says. “I felt you wouldn’t mind if I lent her your room, since she is looking for you and you are looking for her.”
“You haven’t told her anything?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not my place to do so.”
In Cambara’s thoughts, several images mix and match: meeting Qaali and liaising with her about Gacal and what might be done about him; encountering her mother, as she did in the dream; the thought of her mother arriving—“I’ve come to see your play, darling, I hope that I am welcome.” Knowing her mother, however, it is in the realm of the possible that she might just turn up.
“Shall we go and meet my visitor?” Cambara says to Kiin.
“Let us.”
When it is clear that Bile is inclined to stay behind, Cambara wonders aloud whether it would be easier for all concerned and wiser if Qaali were brought to the property, or if she, Cambara, should visit her at the hotel, with Gacal in tow. Kiin and Bile suggest that Cambara visit the woman, on condition that, once it is ascertained that she is the boy’s mother—and it won’t be difficult to do that—then the son and the mother are primed for the meeting. As to the question of how to minimize SilkHair’s anxiety about being separated from Gacal, Bile says, “Leave it to me. I’ll keep SilkHair entertained.”
They exchange parting words as if they are going on a traumatic journey, Bile and SilkHair stepping out of the house to wave good-bye to the departing truck.
“See you when you get back,” says Bile.
“No more rehearsal today,” she says to SilkHair.
Kiin gives Cambara and Gacal a lift to the hotel. And it is as if Cambara is seeing him with different eyes—a child traceable to his antecedents. Is this why the idea of illegitimacy is so abhorrent to societies, because of this missing link to the starting point?
When they get to the hotel, Cambara and Kiin go their different ways, but agree to meet later for an update. Cambara encourages Gacal to spend half an hour or so with the youths whom he hasn’t seen for a couple of days, promising she will call him. She goes up to the room alone, her anxiety level high and aware that she will have managed a coup with no equal if she brings this off, uniting mother and son. Failure is no option. She knocks on the door out of politeness, even though she has the key in her hand. At her light tapping, the door opens. A small woman with drained features is standing in the doorway, anxiously waiting. Neither speaks. Cambara’s thoughts race off like a well-looked-after pet, exploring what there is in the vicinity in hope of returning with interesting findings. Qaali lacks the courage that comes from knowin
g what to do or say. The room is not hers, and she doesn’t know who the woman calling is and why they are meeting here.
This is when Cambara realizes it is incumbent upon her to speak first, as it is her room and world in which they are meeting. Besides, she has more information about Qaali than the other way round. True, they have never met before, but Cambara feels that she knows enough about the woman through the tragedy of her story, and to a lesser degree through Gacal, to give her a hug and a kiss too. Then she decides to speed matters up, and speaks as if they are late for a bus or a plane.
She says, closing the door behind her, and going past the petite woman, “If it is hard for me to know where to start, I can imagine how much more difficult it is for you to begin.”
“My name is Qaali,” the woman introduces herself.
“I know. Mine is Cambara.”
“Not Raaxo Abduraxman?”
“No.”
Qaali is the calmer of the two, considering—a woman who has known storms, dreams of hope turned to daily nightmares. Cambara is nervous, shaking, behaving in a manner that gives the wrong impression to Qaali, something she must put right immediately.
Her voice level, Qaali says, “Maybe you’ll explain who you are and who Raaxo is and whether any of this has to do with my husband’s death, or my son’s life and his whereabouts. Please tell me why I am here.”
Calmness becomes Cambara. “The news is good.”
“What news? What are we talking about?”
Cambara sits down, motions to Qaali to do likewise.
Qaali says, “You have the advantage of knowing who I am, but I am at a disadvantage, because I don’t know who you are. I know I’ve come in answer to the announcement, and that I bear grief and hope in equal measure.”
Overwhelmed and yet able to speak, Cambara says, “Maybe you can tell me what went through your mind when you heard your name announced on the BBC ‘Missing Persons’ program.”
As Cambara waits for Qaali to speak, her first thought is to look for a family resemblance between Gacal and this woman, Qaali. When Qaali begins to talk, her features grow more pleasant to the eye, even if gaunt; her voice is a delight to listen to, unrestrainedly rich, like the kind of yogurt to which a good chef might put any number of uses, fluid, malleable, and cultured.
Knots Page 46
