Hiding in Plain Sight

by Nuruddin Farah

  Valerie looks as if she can’t for the life of her remember anything about any books, but she says, “No worries. Maybe next time.” But Padmini says, “What books?”

  “Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? and Jackie Kay’s most recent novel, which is set in part in Nigeria, where her birth father hails from.” Ulrika flags down a waitress and asks what they want to drink. “You are my guests,” she says, with the same Teutonic certitude Padmini heard on the phone. “The first round is on me.”

  “What is a giant German woman doing in Kenya?” Valerie asks. “I am curious.”

  Ulrika tells them that she makes her living as a masseuse. Well over six feet tall, with a laugh to match, she also has a larger-than-life generosity of spirit that leaves her open to new ideas and new ways of having fun. Her business is booming too. It’s adjacent to her home, in several thatched huts, each with its own Jacuzzi. There’s also a swimming pool of Olympic proportions, a bar, and a small gym. At the extreme end of these structures is the well-appointed apartment where she lives, often alone.

  “How do you mean, often alone?” Valerie asks.

  “Sometimes I have guests, family, friends. And at other times, I entertain my lovers.”

  She is close to her parents, she says; they helped her to establish her business.

  “How often do they visit?”

  “Twice a year,” Ulrika answers. “They spend the whole European winter here.”

  “And who helps you run it?”

  Ulrika tells them she employs two young men, one from Cape Town and the other from Sydney, along with several African women, for the running of the business, plus a couple more that she has trained as masseuses. She adds, “I grew up in South Africa, where my father was West Germany’s consul.” She explains that her father always insisted on sending her to the same schools as the locals and not, say, to the German school in Cape Town, so Ulrika has always felt more comfortable in the company of Africans.

  “And whom do you cater to?” asks Valerie.

  Padmini can see that the idea of Ulrika’s working on her body turns Valerie on, and, sure enough, Valerie says, “Can I book a session?”

  The band launches into a cover of a popular song by a Congolese group, and the two Africans sitting next to Ulrika invite Padmini to dance with them. By the time they return to the table, Ulrika and Valerie are deep in conversation.

  “I’ve always dreaded what would become of my body,” Ulrika is saying, and Padmini guesses they are talking about pregnancy. Ulrika tells one story after another, and Padmini has just about fallen asleep when she hears Valerie ask, “An indiscreet question, if I may?”

  “Go ahead and ask,” Ulrika tells her.

  “Do African women do it too—woman to woman?”

  “Of course,” Ulrika answers.

  “Who did you have your first experience with?”

  “An African girl who was several years older than I—I was nine, she fifteen, and from that day on, I’ve never looked at a boy. In Africa, because no one suspects women to be interested sexually in other women, people leave you alone. The idea of two women doing it is basically alien to African men. But they abhor the idea of men doing it with other men. You can see their disgust in their expressions. And yet I know many African gay men.”

  “Maybe it is like the Muslims and drinking.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Valerie says, “When they come to functions at European embassies where the drinks are flowing, they ask to have their wine and other haram drinks put in coffee mugs so no one can see what they are drinking.”

  “But since Allah sees all, why bother?”

  “It is for show.”

  “You mean saying that we have no gays is for show?”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “Maybe you are right.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  Now it is time for Ulrika and Valerie to go to the dance floor. At first Ulrika pulls Valerie close, her hands wandering all over Valerie’s body. But Valerie disengages, and they dance a meter apart. For once, she is doing her best not to upset Padmini.

  16.

  Something goes wrong with the alarm, which insofar as anyone can tell has gone off for no reason, since no one set it when they turned in for the night. Bella is the first to emerge from her room. Then Salif comes out into the hallway too. “What the hell?” he says. They stand there, Salif in his pajamas, Bella in her robe thrown over a gown she suddenly realizes is missing the top button, listening to the alarm without talking and without the slightest sign of panic. Then, just as mysteriously as it started, it goes off.

  Bella says, “What was all that about?”

  Salif waits a beat, as if to be sure the alarm is really off, and then he gives a “Search me” shrug of his shoulders.

  “Well, what do we do now?” says Bella.

  “You want me to go downstairs and check?” Salif looks furtively around and cranes his neck over the top of the banister. “See if there is someone else in the house apart from us?”

  Bella says, “Of course there is someone else besides us in this house. There is Dahaba.”

  “Nothing wakes her,” says Salif. He picks up the phone and calls out to the cubicle to the right of the gate outside, where the watchmen jabber away in the daytime and sleep at night even though they are supposed to be awake and on guard. When no one answers, Salif says, “I always wonder if there is any point in hiring night guards. They never answer the phone because they are too busy snoring.”

  However, as if to prove him wrong, down the stairway they see the moving shadow of a man in uniform outside the front door, and before either of them speaks, they see him waving up to them and then hear his loud banging on the door. Salif goes halfway down the staircase to ascertain that it is one of the night guards, even though he has no intention of opening the door and letting him in. He knows the man by face and name, and they wave to each other. Relieved, Salif rejoins Bella, who tells him, “Go now, check your sister’s room, please, and see if she is asleep, despite so much seismic racket.”

  He pushes open the door and vanishes for a few seconds, then reemerges to say, “Why don’t you believe me, Auntie? She is asleep, her head under her pillow.”

  “I was hard to awaken too when I was young.”

  “She reads till very late. That’s why she can’t wake up.”

  “Maybe she finds it difficult to sleep, as I did. I used to read or draw figurines, faces of humans, or animals. I fought with our mum when she came in and turned the lights off.”

  Salif stares away in the distance, as if in discomfort. Maybe he doesn’t like her to compare her younger self to Dahaba, Bella thinks.

  It’s the sudden silence of the house once the alarm is off that wakes Dahaba, who, rubbing her eyes red, joins them, asking what has happened. Bella and Salif look amused, and Bella says, “Not to worry.” Dahaba and Salif are thirsty and want water to drink, and Bella wants to have tea, so they gather in the kitchen.

  Bella asks them about their conversations with their mother the previous day, and Salif tells her about Valerie’s plans to found a trust. Bella knows that Valerie hasn’t the wherewithal to fund a trust, or even to set one up, without Bella’s tacit approval and backing, but knowing that Valerie’s ploy is no real threat, she is sorry that it has backfired on her. How, Bella wonders, can she give the children and their mother a chance to arrive at a rapprochement?

  Instantly it comes to her: How about inviting Valerie and Padmini along on an outing to Lake Naivasha today? They’ll stop to have a picnic by the lake, and if there is time, they’ll venture farther up the Rift Valley. Even better if the children are the ones who invite them.

  Dahaba is enthused about the plan, but she insists that Salif make the call, not her. After all, it’s Salif who was so rude to Valerie when she call
ed him at their friends’.

  “I will do it with pleasure, Auntie,” says Salif, “first thing in the morning.”

  It is after three in the morning when they retreat upstairs, and still later when Bella leaves two presents wrapped in pretty paper outside of their bedroom doors. Then she too goes back to bed.

  —

  The alarm goes off again a couple of hours later, coinciding with the muezzin’s call to prayer. As before, Bella is the first to come out of her bedroom, and once again she is joined by Salif, who, cursing, comes to her aid and turns it off.

  Bella says, “We need to have the alarm serviced.”

  “I’ll see to that, Auntie.”

  “Don’t alarms put the fear of the Almighty into you?”

  “No, because I know how to disarm ours.”

  “Clever boy,” she says, and she asks if he wants to join her for breakfast. He accepts, and she goes downstairs to get the meal started while he takes a shower and dresses. When he walks into the kitchen after his shower, Salif is carrying the wrapped present. She pretends not to notice it until he sits at the table and unwraps it and exclaims in delight. He walks over to the stove and gives her a hug and a kiss. “How could I have missed this?” he asks. He is effusive in his thanks, although he struggles to find the words with which to express his gratitude.

  “You weren’t expecting it.”

  “I must’ve been exhausted too.”

  “Glad you like it.”

  “Am I ready to roll?”

  “You are.”

  “Is there film in it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is it color?”

  “There is a roll of color film in it, but I also bought one that is black and white from Nakumatt when I went there for last night’s shop,” Bella says. “I prefer the traditional in most things, and the memory of holding my first camera, putting a roll of film in it, taking photos, and then developing them is indelible. There is something hauntingly beautiful about the process itself: the feel of the photo paper, the smell of the chemicals, the anticipation of the details that will be revealed. There is none of that with the immediacy of digital photography.”

  Salif has already aimed the camera at her and begun to take his own pictures of her during this soliloquy, capturing the eyes she narrows as though she were focusing on an unreachably distant image. She is remembering a couple of lines from a Rilke poem—Rilke, who began to mean something to her when she visited the Castello di Duino near Trieste, where she spent three months after Hurdo’s burial in Toronto. Afterward, she’d learned sufficient German that, with the help of an Italian translation, she could read the master’s elegies to that beautiful place. In the poem titled “Turning-Point,” Rilke alludes to the fact that even looking has a boundary and that the world that is looked at so deeply wants to flourish in love, yearns to “do heart-work / on all the images imprisoned within you.”

  Bella shakes herself out of her reverie. “You’d best call your mother now to see if she and Padmini will be able to join us today.”

  Salif dials her, looking apprehensive, but from the change in his face it is obvious to Bella that her plan has worked. Salif has woken Valerie, but once she understands why he is calling, she accepts eagerly. She says they will be at the house as soon as they can dress and shower and arrange a taxi.

  “Excellent,” says Bella. “Now what would you like for breakfast?”

  “What are the choices?”

  “I did a big shop,” she says. “Come, open the fridge.”

  “Bacon, with bread and two eggs sunny side up if that is no problem,” he says, taking out the ketchup and closing the fridge.

  “Why do you say, ‘If it is no problem’?”

  “I thought you might disapprove, seeing that you were brought up in a Muslim household.”

  “I got it for you and Dahaba,” she says.

  “But you don’t eat it yourself?”

  “Not because of religious reasons.”

  “Why then?”

  “Too salty and too fatty.”

  “You know what Dad used to say?”

  “Remind me.”

  “He found the idea of eating pork abhorrent.”

  “But not for religious reasons, right?”

  “Same as you on that score.”

  She places the bacon in the pan, overlapping the slices, and then puts some porridge for herself to simmer. She breaks the eggs into the pan and asks Salif to put the bread in the toaster. She doesn’t turn the eggs but leaves the yolks golden and runny, just as he’d asked. She stirs her porridge and turns the bacon with a practiced hand, making her meal and his almost at the same moment so they can eat together. “Bismillah,” she says, and he wishes her “Bon appétit!”

  Barely has either of them taken a mouthful when Dahaba appears in the doorway, groggily focusing on the camera next to Salif’s plate.

  “Why did you give it to him, Auntie?” she asks.

  “Give what to whom?”

  “The beautiful camera.”

  Bella looks at Salif in a manner that makes it clear that she does not want him to rise to Dahaba’s provocation. Then she says to Dahaba, “First a good morning greeting, my darling.”

  “Good morning, Auntie.”

  “Did you sleep well?”

  “I did, only I thought I heard a loud noise going off, and some people speaking in the landing above the staircase. But I was too exhausted to get up to see if any of it was real. Now it is the smell of frying bacon that has woken me. Can you make some for me, Auntie?”

  “Of course, my darling,” says Bella, and she gets up and gives her niece a hug and a loving kiss.

  Salif speaks up. “Why don’t you eat your porridge while it’s nice and hot, Auntie, and I’ll offer my bacon to Dahaba. I don’t mind waiting a few more minutes for my own.”

  “Thanks, darling, but I’ll make her own,” Bella says. “What else would you like with your bacon?”

  “Same as Salif’s, except I don’t like the yolks liquid. In the meantime, I’ll pop a slice of bread in the toaster if there is some to be had.” Dahaba makes as if she will do as she says, but she moves half-heartedly, as if hoping that someone else will beat her to it. She looks tired.

  Salif makes a point of not looking in her direction as he dip slices of his bacon in ketchup and yolk. His habit of eating his bacon this way is part of family lore. Wendy could never abide it and thought it unrefined. “What are knives and forks for if not to be used, and why would anyone bother to place them on your table if you are going to end up behaving like some savage from Africa?” Bella can hear her saying.

  Dahaba looks as if she can hardly bear the thought of waiting for her own breakfast, but in a little while it is ready, though Bella’s porridge is now cold. She puts a lump of butter in it and microwaves it until it is hot again, then eats it. When Bella gets up to make herself a macchiato, Dahaba asks, “What is your answer, Auntie? Do you have another camera like the one you’ve given to Salif or not?”

  Salif can’t restrain himself anymore. With a touch of sarcasm, he says, “Yours is right outside your bedroom door, wrapped in the most beautiful wrapping paper.”

  Dahaba abandons her breakfast and darts up and down the stairs with remarkable alacrity. Yet she unwraps the present with surprising delicacy, like someone removing a Band-Aid. Salif, impatient, offers to do the dishes before Valerie and Padmini arrive.

  Bella says, “I’ll give you both a brief demo of the art of nondigital photography. I hope you will appreciate the cameras and look after them with great care. My hope is to train you to do your own printing here in this house, where there is plenty of space to set up a darkroom.”

  Dahaba’s concentration falters as she fingers the knobs on the camera. This is the first time she has held such a camera, and it frustrates her
that it doesn’t react to her touch the way the digital camera did. “What is the difference between digital and nondigital cameras, Auntie?” she says at last.

  “Good question,” says Bella, pleased. This is as good a place to start as any. And she begins to speak, picking her way through a minefield of data and information that she knows won’t make much sense to novices such as Dahaba and Salif.

  “Nondigital cameras differ from their analog predecessors in that they do not have film inside them, is that right, Auntie?” says Salif.

  “What are analog predecessors?” Dahaba cries. “I have no idea what you two are talking about.” She pleads with them to use words she can make sense of. “Analog predecessors? I know what ‘predecessor’ is, but not what ‘analog’ means. Please.”

  While Bella is thinking of a way to explain these concepts, Salif adds to Dahaba’s confusion. “In place of having black-and-white or color films in them, digital cameras save the images they capture on a digital memory card or cards, in addition to some form of internal chemical storage.”

  Dahaba screams, “Stop showing off, you fool.”

  Bella falls sadly silent, knowing that in this, as in so much else with these children, it is not going to be easy to negotiate the obstacles. She will need time to work out a course of action that will allow Salif and Dahaba to grow into who they wish to be—not into what she wants them to be.

  —

  Valerie and Padmini’s taxi drops them at the gate more than half an hour early. They are waiting to be let in. Bella suggests Dahaba put away the cameras while Salif goes and welcomes their guests. Dahaba seems to be torn between greeting her mother and partner and going upstairs to shower and get ready. Bella encourages her to do the latter, saying, “We don’t want to get a late start.”

  Padmini enters, and she and Bella hug and exchange kisses on their cheeks. Bella observes that Padmini is a touch warmer than before. In fact, it occurs to her that the two of them have never been alone in a room before—and therefore have never had the pleasure (or displeasure) of exchanging their views on matters of common concern, namely Valerie and the children. Maybe the time has come to cultivate Padmini.