by Igiaba Scego
Here, Zuhra, I am starting my story. It’s yours too, in part. I wasn’t a father to you. I’m more like a stranger. But listen to me anyway, okay?
While I’m at it, I’ll tell you everything as though it weren’t my story, but someone else’s. It’ll hurt less for us. That’s what I tell myself.
Am I ready? I don’t think…I don’t know. What do you say, my big girl? Does conception occur in the mind or in the heart?
Elias’s mother first dreamed of the boy when she was twelve years old, but she had to wait six more years before giving birth to him. She did it in a way she never could’ve imagined.
She was born to a family of fishermen in an age of colonial tyrannies. Her family was odd. They looked everywhere in search of life. The ocean was a threadbare bed. The men left at dawn and the women waited on shore. Sometimes they would catch nothing, not even a miserable sardine, but there were also days when fishing yielded fat tunas. Each tuna was a celebration. The difficulties of the endeavor and the wait were forgotten. People are born, people die, but the one who fishes is sometimes in between. They do not live or die. They wait, but no one knows for what.
The mother, who had a name as mild as a dragonfly, hated the sea. Her city, Brava, was in a small valley and everything revolved around it—marriages, funerals, births, quarrels, breath itself. Famey, as the girl was called, wished instead to breathe the exhaust fumes of those metal heaps they called automobiles. She wanted to inhale them deeply to become an automobile herself. Famey had seen one only once. There were white people inside, the ones rumored to be in charge of the country. The big city was full of automobiles like that. She knew this because her cousin Ruqia had married a soldier in the Italian army, a dubat, and was living like a queen in the capital Mogadishu, the red city. When she came to Brava, Ruqia flaunted gorgeous gowns and did nothing but praise her Omar, who “was honored because he’d performed like a hero in Libya.” Libya? What is Libya? Famey asked herself. It’s probably another place where people have automobiles. The girl would only speak of that distance place, mysterious Libya, when she was fawning over her cousin and her dear Omar. She dreamed of automobiles every night. Every night she pictured herself as a great woman escorted around Mogadishu. She also dreamed of Libya. She liked how the name sounded.
Brava bored her. The people seemed happy not because they were fortunate, but because they were stupid. “What are these people laughing at?” she asked herself, perplexed. “Don’t they see that the ocean is eating us alive?” The sea, in effect, had a price. Human lives. It had swallowed many Bravanese over the years, some literally devoured by sharks—they feared nothing, and the smell of fresh blood drove them recklessly toward the shore. Others paid their sad tribute directly to the water. They drowned and that was it. But the people were happy all the same. The air was temperate, the fish abundant, the sand clean. The women cooked from morning till night. Tuna was served in soup or on skewers, the mufo, the bread, accompanied multicolored sauces and the gallamuddo, Brava’s pasta, made tongues spin in pure pleasure. Famey hated all of it. She was bored and wanted the life Ruqia spoke of, married to a soldier. Her mama shook her head every time she heard her complain. “This will end badly. Maybe it’s time you find a good husband.”
Famey, I didn’t tell you, cut a fine figure. She was a starfish with intense green eyes. That could happen in Brava. Everyone passed through the little Somali valley. Egyptians, ancient Romans (shipwrecked with many togas and latinorum), Arabs, Portuguese, Malaysians and, lastly, Benito Mussolini’s Italians. In Brava, colors were gradations of a story, an encounter. There were white Bravanese, black Bravanese, curly-haired Bravanese, straight-haired Bravanese. Eyes the color of cobalt, spruce, and charcoal. The noses were a cornucopia of forms. Long, short, chunky, coarse, outlandish, truncated. Something for all tastes. To distinguish themselves from their brothers in the Horn, the Bravanese invented another language. They spoke in Somali and prayed in Arabic, but the language of their hearts was an explosive mix of Swahili, Portuguese, and Arabic. In Bravanese, they sent their children to sleep. In Bravanese, they commemorated the Prophet’s miraj. In Bravanese, women learned the secrets of wedding nights.
Famey was beautiful and she knew it. Like all beauties, she was a little fanatical. Before ending up in the maws of a shark, her father had made his wife promise she would never impose a husband on Famey. Her mother was an honorable woman and respected her husband more than herself. She said, “Very well,” but then thought, There are other ways to convince a girl. After much wandering from house to house in search of the perfect match, her mother bumped into Abd-al-Majid. The boy was frail, but he had a full head of black hair and a complexion that reminded her of a baby tuna.
The mother’s plan was to make Famey and Majid fall in love. They would naturally come to the point where he was on his knees asking her to marry him. This was in fact what happened, but not in the way the mother had imagined. One day, during the turbulent thirties, word arrived in Brava that one of the many cousins who emigrated to the big city was getting married. The bride was named Nadifa. Everyone knew her. From a young age, she had been a nasty, runny-nosed brat who played pranks on the fishermen and constantly repeated a strange word that no one ever understood. She would say it and run away laughing. The fisherman puzzled over the word at length.
“The word doesn’t exist,” one of them said. “No, that brat is insulting us.” “I think it’s a word from the Quran.” “No, impossible. It must be something those wretched, kinky-haired jareer say.” Conjectures, basically. Then Nadifa left with her family for Mogadishu and everyone forgot about her, at least until the announcement of her marriage to a wealthy Somali who worked alongside the country’s new masters. The same fate as her cousin Ruqia. Wives of collaborators.
The mother made sure Famey and Majid attended the wedding together and that they’d be alone. She feigned sudden illness and the kids took the shuttle bus. They were both sixteen years old.
The shitaue, the shuttle that connected Brava to Mogadishu, hadn’t been around for that long. It was the invention of an Abgaal who had copied it from India. I don’t know why that man was in India. Dark-skinned Africans, in those times, certainly couldn’t move freely—not like now, anyway. By comparison, today’s dark Africans travel like courageous adventurers. How he ended up down there I couldn’t say; even at that time, there were people with the travel bug in their blood. Somalis, you know, could sense commerce anywhere, and India was a stone’s throw away. The ocean was all it took to connect it to Somalia. That man set up three transit lines: one from Brava to Mogadishu, another from Merca to Mogadishu, and the last from Galkayo to Mogadishu. Most of the revenue went to the Italians, the country’s masters.
Six people were on the shitaue that day: the two unknowingly betrothed cousins, the driver, himself an Abgaal who had the popular name Mohamed, then Muqtar, a merry man who never stopped talking, and finally a couple that was moving to Mogadishu permanently, Jamila and Farah.
The shitaue was half empty. It wasn’t the best time for travel. The sky foretold of a storm and burning souls. The new masters thought themselves omnipotent. They had crushed Ethiopia, proclaimed their Empire, and flaunted their manhood. In the thirties, the Italians believed they were gods. Soon enough they would awaken from their demented dream. But at the time, it was best not to run into them outside of Mogadishu. People said horrible things about their excursions.
“Nonsense!” the driver said, “I know my shitaue, we take this route all the time. Nothing has ever happened to me. I’d really like to see…”
His wish was granted. Two jeeps loaded with young white men stopped the defenseless shuttle. “Fresh meat, boys!”
The six passengers were forced to get off. They were divided, women on one side and men on the other. A tall man with a square head and a pentagonal ass walked in front of them, reviewing. Famey thought he must have been important. His uniform was different. He was completely square, even his hands lacked round
ness. It was as if he were speaking a language that wasn’t Italian. Famey did not know Italian, but this wasn’t it. She would swear on her life. She was oblivious, little Famey. The others were wetting themselves in fear, and she was busy examining the shape of the high-ranking soldier. Famey was an attentive observer and had an ear for languages. If someone had paid the slightest attention to her upbringing, she would’ve undoubtedly become a polyglot.
The man was a lordling from the Lower Saxony who’d molded himself into an SS officer. He and Colonel Guglielmi of the Twentieth Division had made a bet inside the jeep. They would ask the first Somali they encountered who instilled more fear, the Germans or the Italians. Guglielmi, sure of himself, said, “These are a loyal people. They fear us because we’re their lords and masters. They don’t even know who you are.” The German said only this: “They will know who we are,” and five minutes later they came upon the shuttle.
The Somali they asked was Muqtar, the long-winded man who wouldn’t shut up. He was the only one who spoke Italian. Sometimes, talking excessively was pointless. It didn’t help Muqtar and it didn’t help the rest of the group either. To Guglielmi’s question, instead of responding with “Germans” or “Italians,” he said, “The English.” Why? To get out of trouble. Fear is a horrid emotion. If they’re asking me that, he thought to himself, they may want to hear that they’re good and valiant, while the English are scoundrels. So, hoping to praise the Italians and the Germans, he ended up insulting them both. Muqtar blathered on like a radio. He didn’t limit himself to saying, “The English,” but went into a detailed account of their ferocity, of how merciless they were with beasts, children, women. He described their bloodthirsty sneers, their wicked salivating. The outcome: Guglielmi shot him right above the brow.
It was the end of the world. All were raped, regardless of sex, thrashed, humiliated. Farah, who was traveling with his wife, had his privates cut off by the German official. They were immediately scooped up by two skulking vultures drawn to the stench of death.
Famey and her cousin suffered the same fate. She was taken by three different men. Two Italians and a German. She lost her voice with the first one, flailed, bit, tried wriggling away. With the second one she could no longer do anything, terrified by her cousin’s shouts. She knew very well that these things happened to women. How was it possible that it could befall men as well? She thought the men would annihilate them with their bullets, not their pricks. Who could save her if they were doing the same thing to her cousin? Thus, with the second and third, she was relatively cooperative, so useless was it to resist. No one could save her from that nightmare. From the corner of her eye she saw Guglielmi raping Majid.
They did not say anything to anyone in Mogadishu. The festivities for Nadifa and her rich spouse lasted four days. On the fifth, Majid and Famey announced their engagement.
TWO
THE NUS-NUS
She squeezed into her khaki pants from Aigle, the ones Pati had given her for Christmas. Her favorites. A large pocket in the front, with a convenient top zipper. Without thinking twice, Mar shoved a small volume of poems by Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz inside the pocket, then slowly advanced toward Avenue de la Liberté.
“I’m not waiting for you, hija,” her mother told her as she still clung to her purple pillow. She never parted ways with it, taking it on every trip. “I have to take the entrance exam. I’m up first. You’re lucky, dear, that you don’t have to take exams. I wish I could start from the alphabet, too. Lady Luck really does favor the young.”
Luck? Who said anything about luck? And what alphabet was she talking about? Ah, yes, the Arabic alphabet. She forgot she was in Tunis, forcibly enrolled in school. What did those absurd puzzles matter to her, those indecipherable signs? Her mother was forcing her to unscramble them, but did she want to? No, of course not. Going to Arabic school—whose fucking idea was that? She didn’t give a damn about Arabs, Arabic, Hezbollah, or Bin Laden, and Tunis disagreed with her like a plate of badly fried calamari.
Mar felt something like a clean cut on the jugular. A slicing wound. Vile nostalgia. She pined for Villa Borghese and the shameless policemen staring at her ass. Dragging herself anxiously along, her mind fixated on Patricia. She’d been in that city for only a day and Patricia was already badgering her. The time spent with her, the pain felt for her. Ceaseless memory. She felt like a roach. A nasty, worthless roach.
She was late. Surely she would show up to the lesson after it had already begun. Fifteen minutes later, not a minute before, not a minute after. She was hungry and tired. She wanted to go back. There was no breakfast service in their boarding house, people arranged everything on their own. The people…what people? One day in Tunis had gone by and the only person she’d seen inside was the sister who’d given them their keys. What was her name again? Sister Meditación. She was Argentinian, like her mom. Naturally, such social affinity was forgotten. But those sisters were familiar, and they were practically the only ones isolated in that faux Muslim, faux Western, faux everything city. Their clothes were an intense, deep blue, like the skies in Japanese animes. Sister Meditación gave her and her mother a thorough tour of the place. The atrium, the elevator, the clotheshorse, the washing machine, the kitchen, the terrace, the parlors, the giant blow-up photo of John Paul II, (the Pope was always John Paul, because to many people it was as though he’d never died) with Ben Ali, who looked like an obese transvestite from Pigalle. To even the playing field, there was also a normal-sized photo of His Eminence Pope Benedict XVI. The tour concluded with the bedrooms. She and her mother stayed on separate floors. Mar got lucky with her room. She was on the third floor. Her mother was on the first. The floor between them spoke volumes.
Sister Meditación had the gentle face of an adolescent. She was very young. Looking at her, Mar was convinced that true faith granted great serenity. She herself had faith in nothing and knew she would be eternally damned. “There are no strangers in this place,” the sister said. “That is the only rule.” Mar wondered if they’d have recognized Patricia. She always stayed there. Wearing that black-striped tee and those awful dark shoes. She didn’t know how to dress. It was pathetic. As soon as the sister and her mother went away, Patricia took possession of the bed. “Get away from there,” Mar commanded. “You’re dead. I’m the one that still has to sleep and wake up every morning.” Patricia settled near the room’s only window. She curled on the ground in a fetal position. “Leave me alone. The bed is mine!” Mar shouted.
She laid a mat near the window so her lover-friend could lie down, but Patricia had vanished. Mar wondered if she would come back. She’d never believed in ghosts. Patricia, however, was not a ghost. She was part of her, it was different. If she were a ghost, she would’ve had blood and brain splatters everywhere. An eye socket split in half, the eyeball dangling. If Patricia were a ghost, Mar would’ve feared her. But she wasn’t. She was one of her projections. A macabre fantasy.
Who knows if Sister Meditación would’ve recognized her. She was such a sweet lady. Though on that point she was inflexible: “No strangers in our maison.” Was Patricia a stranger?
There was a huge espresso machine in the kitchen that she could use to make coffee. Laziness had gotten the better of her by then. The thought of fiddling around at that hour with an espresso-maker she’d never used didn’t appeal to her. She preferred a café. They were downtown, after all, on a cross street of Bourguiba Avenue, the Champs-Élysées of the hapless colonized, the parlor of Tunis. “They clean it every night,” her mom told her. “That’s all they do, mostly picking up garbage. Bourguiba Avenue has to shine like a mirror.” She headed toward that parlor, dragging her feet. She stopped by the currency exchange first and then plopped herself like dead weight in a crowded bar. A man sitting next to Mar watched her, intrigued.
“Are you American? Vous-êtes français?”
Mar didn’t respond. She lit a cigarette, then ordered a croissant and mint tea. “Chaud, s’il vous plaît.�
� She sucked in the noxious cigarette smoke. She should’ve quit smoking. She hadn’t enjoyed it in years. Patricia would scold her time and again. Her mother didn’t lay off that vice either. “Do you want to reduce your lungs to a bacterial clump? You want them to explode like an atomic bomb? Do you want to die in pain?”
Mar was dying from pain. She opened the little book of Sister Juana’s poems and distractedly read some verses. The words dripped with icy rancor. It couldn’t have been easy being trapped in a woman’s body during the seventeenth century, in Mexico or anywhere else. It wasn’t even easy in the twenty-first. The croissant was nauseating, she didn’t like it. As a child, she would’ve eaten fifteen of those peculiar, buttery croissants in a row. They offered her a sweetness her mother didn’t know how to give. She was always lost in her reading, her mother. Mar had gained weight to make her see that she, her daughter, her black daughter, also occupied a space…and what a space. She became all folds and round rolls. Her mother, lost in her readings. She, lost in butter. The poetry, lost in its incommunicability.
Her mother’s poems made her sick to her stomach. They were narcissistic delusions, a continuous spewing on defects, power, compromise. The poems were filled with subjects, virtues, struggle, feminism, rights. You could feel the social tension and the weight of responsibility. The closed fist. The ideology. They contained Cuba, Che, Salvador Allende, the unavoidable desaparecidos. The contradictions of the USSR. Politics, anti-capitalism, Socialist International. Even Mao was in a poem. China. The proletariat. The shattered ideal of Deng Xiaoping’s new direction. Fidel’s ambiguity. The European divide. She, the poet’s daughter, the one who was too black, she was never there.
