Then, as if at Valerie’s behest, Padmini says, “And we thank you for everything you’ve done. You’ve been the most generous host possible, especially considering your state of mourning.”
And Valerie, if a touch begrudgingly, adds, “And we mourn with you. He was a wonderful man and proved himself to be a wonderful father to our children.”
And what is there left for Bella to say but “Thanks”?
She is fond of silence, Bella reflects, in whose palatial space she can move around; she is seldom betrayed by the slip of her tongue, the way Valerie often is. But tonight Valerie seems to be a different self.
Bella asks, “Shall I call down Salif and Dahaba so that you can say a real good-bye?”
“Please, no,” says Valerie.
“But why not?” says Bella in surprise.
“For one thing, I hate saying good-bye, and I can’t stand the sight of Dahaba weeping and Salif making cutting remarks. I’ve never regretted doing what I did, leaving them. And I feel they are in superb hands with you—in fact, I trust that they will do better in your company and care than in mine.” She pauses, and then goes on. “I love the darkroom, which I see as a wonderful illustration of your dedication to them, your interest in their well-being, and your intention to share the most important parts of yourself. If I speak with them again, I may muddle things. I don’t want to leave them with conflict in their minds.”
Valerie’s mobile phone sounds. She looks at it, then nods to Padmini. “Our cab is here, darling.”
Padmini again articulates their thanks, and they both rise to their feet. “We can see ourselves out,” Valerie says, gesturing to Bella to stay put. Then she says, “Many things that ordinary people view as normal, including saying good-bye, are foreign to my nature. I have several selves, in fact: a private self that I am comfortable with and a public self that I find as demanding and exhausting as speaking a foreign tongue that I am barely familiar with. No doubt, you all think that I am rather unusual, uncouth in my outlook, ungrateful when I should be grateful. ‘Good-bye’ and ‘thank you’ do not figure in my vocabulary for reasons that have to do with my father and my upbringing. And so I would be lying to you if I use the very words I associate with a period of my young life that I viscerally hate to relive.”
Bella thinks of the Somali wisdom that holds that what your parents don’t teach, you will be compelled to learn the hard way from an unfeeling society. She is glad that Valerie is showing some signs of coming to her senses about her life and her priorities. But true to her word, Valerie neither thanks Bella nor apologizes, and she makes it clear that she does not wish to hug or to be kissed on the cheek. As she heads for the door, Bella takes Padmini in a tight embrace.
“Go gently, my friend,” says Bella.
And then Padmini goes to join her partner in the waiting cab.
Acknowledgments
This is a work of fiction, whose germs developed in the soil of my imagination, even though the background of the events narrated here comes from other brains and other earths. However, I must make very clear that any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental.
A number of authors and their works, in ways both obvious and not so obvious, have played an essential role in the writing of this book, and I am grateful to them. Prominent among these are: Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida (translated by Richard Howard); Susan Sontag’s On Photography; Barry Monk’s The Freelance Photography Handbook; Sylvia Tamale’s African Sexualities: A Reader; and The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Stephen Mitchell). The line “La joie venait toujours après la peine,” from Guillaume Apollinaire’s poem “Le Pont Mirabeau,” is translated by James Kirkup as “Joy always follows sorrow.” The line “After the first death, there is no other” is from Dylan Thomas’s “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London.”
A draft of this novel was, largely, written before the death of my favorite sister, Basra Farah Hassan, killed by Taliban terrorists in a Kabul restaurant bombing on January 17, 2014. Basra, in whose name friends of mine and I have founded the Basra Farah Funds for Women and Children, worked tirelessly for UNICEF and devoted much of her working life to improving the lives of those she met, wherever she was posted, in Ethiopia, in Darfur, in refugee camps in Pakistan, southern Africa, and Afghanistan. Everyone who knew her would agree that she strived hard to leave the world into which she was born a better place than how she found it. May her soul rest in peace.
Finally, I am grateful to many people who have hosted me, looked after me during my research travels: Mahadsanidin! My special thanks must also go to Faisal Roble, Fowsia Abdulkader, and Monique Lortie, who have volunteered to help set up the Basra Farah Funds for Women and Children: to all of you, I say Mahadsanidin too.
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