by Igiaba Scego
The country binge ended with the sixties. It made sense. Everything is a parenthetical in life. Robert Allen Zimmerman started frequenting Greenwich Village again. He realized the Big Apple, that fanciful city, was his true inspiration.
You also like Dylan. When you were a child, I raised you on the notes of “Mr. Tambourine Man.” I inherited my lovely voice from my mother. Of course I can’t sing fado, but I’m not so far from it. I draw on ancient sources. De Gregori (another one you like) says that, with his singing, Dylan reaches Homeric heights. I only want him to reach you.
That’s where Flaca comes in.
Flaca, my brother’s fiancée, the perfect girl, the woman whom my mother loved more than me. Flaca. Rosa Benassi. Daughter of Italians. I saw her a few days after that first encounter in Rome with Pablo Santana, on an anonymous Roman street. She was singing “Hurricane.” A Dylan song from Desire, 1976.
I discovered that Ernesto had given her that album for her birthday. They weren’t ever able to listen to it together. He was kidnapped before she had a chance to unwrap it.
She liked Dylan. She liked Mercedes Sosa and Baez, too.
And I’ll tell you one thing, Mar, she danced to them.
THE PESSOPTIMIST
Ever since she was a little girl, Howa Rosario had a long luminous black braid. It was perhaps the first memory Maryam had of her friend. A luminous braid. The second memory was of her nose. Quite a strange nasal orifice. It stole the scene like an old star at La Scala. She had a precious face. The eyes of a gazelle, the mouth of a filly and, in the middle of those assorted perfections, an enormous, gargantuan twisted vortex. It was tiresome trying to identify it as a nose. It was like a work of baroque architecture. To the point that Maryam, years later, seeing the dome of the Church of Saint-Yves, said, Wa assaga! There it is. She meant Howa’s nose. That coiled dome had the same purity as her friend’s nose. The same virginal candor. Maryam was moved by it.
Most people, however, thought the eccentricity in the middle of Howa’s face was a disgrace. Curiously, not everyone noticed it right away. First, people looked admiringly at Howa. With mouth agape, they delighted in the thousand perfections with which Allah had endowed her. Pure, ascetic ardor was in their expressions. Then, unfailingly, their faith dwindled because of her damaged nose. They stared for a few moments, but that was often all it took to make them shake their heads and murmur, “Kasaro, kasaro.” Tragedy, a tragedy. Sometimes people shouted kasaro at her just to share their private pain.
The reason that nasal appendage was so, let’s say, original, was an accident. There are conflicting accounts as to when it happened. Was she six years old? Ten? No more than twelve, whatever the case. Nearly everyone knew how it happened. The girl had confronted a jinn with her rosary, the people said. The jinn wanted to dishonor her, and she was defending herself. Flickers of the rosary. A flurry of acuudu billahi mina sheydhani rajimi. The devil moved back. It was a mean, atrocious, libidinous jinn without scruples. Having been unable to savor her innocence, it cruelly decided to disfigure her forever. That was why it bit her nose. It sank its grubby, monstrous canines into her pretty, delicate little nose, for which the family had received many compliments. Her beauty vanished forever without leaving a trace, not one memory. A nice treatment the jinn had given her, and a lasting one at that. “I want to see if she can find a husband with that trunk.” And it ran away, hair to the wind, laughing uproariously. A truly sadistic jinn. “This is why she carries the rosary like an old woman,” people said, wanting to find an explanation for her unusual juvenile devotion. That’s why the story of the jinn seems plausible to most people, otherwise how does one explain the rosary? Her attentiveness to religion and the prophets? To prayer? “You need to enjoy yourself,” the world shouted. Instead, she hugged the rosary to her chest like an anchor of salvation. Maryam had always had serious doubts about the story of the jinn. Howa’s nose certainly was ugly. Horrible, frankly. But blaming it on the jinn was carrying it too far. “I think she just fell out of a tree.”
They knew much earlier that they would become close friends. Both were from Skuraran and their houses faced the same open lot. They said the ceremonious Assalamu aleikum multiple times a day, and if it wasn’t peace be with you, it was a wanaagsan something, a good something. Good afternoon, good evening, many good blessings upon you. Wanaagsan at every hour of the day. It was a lullaby. One hardly looked at the other when saying the exceedingly courteous word. They were like fine-tuned machines with conditioned gestures. Howa let her rosary dangle, and Maryam fidgeted with her hands.
Skuraran was so distant, a remote past that bordered on legend. Skuraran, their neighborhood, among the first to disappear. It wasn’t the warlords’ civil war that turned it into a heap of ruins. It was much earlier than that, because of one soldier’s longing for power. The caudillo Siad Barre razed it to the ground. With one sweeping motion, he made Skuraran vanish. It was the same gesture Mussolini made when he ordered Borgo’s destruction to make room for the anonymous Via della Conciliazione. In Skuraran, there were secret passages, balconies, wells, tunnels, alleys, arches, hiding places. Like the stripes on a reptile’s body, confused but elegant. Skuraran. Maryam Laamane had walked so many paths there.
The gazelle-like Maryam Laamane didn’t run anymore. She was now a woman, sitting in her living room in Rome, intent on recording her own life. Or trying to. Her posture in front of the recorder had become more balanced. Her axis was straight and her head didn’t sway uncontrollably from side to side. Maryam was calmer. Her hands didn’t sweat anymore. She was getting used to untangling knots. Her own, and the disordered knots of history.
She dearly missed Howa, her lifelong friend, who was also like their neighborhood Skuraran: distant, cold, gone forever. A past that bordered on legend. “May God have mercy on her and on all of us,” Maryam whispered softly into the recorder. Howa Rosario, dead. No more rosary dangling at her side, no more laughs, no more nostalgia.
Maryam Laamane was alone. Was it true? No, no it wasn’t. Zuhra was there. Yes, thanks be to God, Zuhra was there.
She and Howa were only in a few photos together, but those few were important. Maryam’s favorite was the one where she was with Howa Rosario and little Zuhra in front of the Hotel Archimede, near Termini Station. They were leaning sleepily against an earth-colored Beetle. Zuhra had confused, curly hair, her arms were folded, and she wore a short dress that made her into a worker bee, a triumph of yellow and black. It was the handiwork of her crazy father. Maryam liked this photo. It was taken on the day she found Howa Rosario again. Siad Barre’s regime was to blame for them falling out of touch. In the picture, Howa no longer had her black braid. It was covered by a sea-blue scarf. It was beautiful. Her crooked nose lit up like a neon lamp.
“Your dress is beautiful!” she’d said before hugging her.
“Your husband made it.”
She knew that. She recognized her tailor husband’s surreal style. She might’ve even noticed the dress before Howa’s proboscis.
They found themselves again on Via dei Mille. It was from there, years later, that Howa’s funeral procession began.
Howa Rosario was lovely. One almost didn’t notice her crooked nose.
Skuraran, a long-lost epoch. They had spoken of it for the first time in 1960. They’d become friends in those nine glorious years of democracy. Then they lost each other. Life, difficulties. They found one another again only in 1978. And in 2006, Maryam buried her.
On that day in 1960, she didn’t suspect their friendship would last so long.
Aunt Ruqia ordered her to “go get a bit of ageen from Hajiedda Saida.” Ageen, the buttery dough that smelled like home.
It was a day of preparations. A wedding day. Who was getting married? All of Somalia. It was the much longed-for independence day. The next day, July 1, 1960, they would be a free and independent state, a country that could have its say and stand on equal footing with the others. No more masters, no more Italians, no more
Englishmen. No more dogs tarnishing their homes. They would finally be free. They would shout their joy to the world. And they would hoist their flag in the wind, under the sun. A blue background and a star. The sky. The same sky that made her happy every night.
The country was in a state of great anxiety. People prepared speeches, dances, songs. The women cooked fragrant meals. Everyone on that strange eve dreamed about the celebration that would marry Somalia to liberty. The five points of the white star. The five territories that made up the land of aromas and beauties. Missing from the roll call were Djibouti, the North Eastern Province, and Ogaden. They still didn’t know that there would never be total reunification and that, on the contrary, the territory would be sold in pieces to the highest bidder. But in 1960 people were ambitious. It was the year of Somalia and all of Africa.
Maryam wasn’t thinking about border problems then. She only had the next day’s festivities in mind. She set out toward Hajiedda Saida’s house. It was always like this. In the end, they always sent her to Hajiedda Saida’s place. “You’re the smallest. The ageen is your responsibility.” The compact ball of yeast dough stunk. The more it stunk, the better the injera would be. Why did she have to be the one to endure that vile stench for such a long way? Hajiedda Saida’s house was sad. First there was that beefy husband of hers, her second, who ranted from morning till evening. An ugly thing to see. She didn’t like how he looked at her with darting eyes, as though he’d never seen a young girl before. Howa Rosario’s braid was also there, and that did much to reassure her. There were many braids in that house. Only Howa Rosario had one so beautiful. Then, abruptly, the beefy man died, and she disliked going to that house a little less, even though Hajiedda Saida herself was still rather unnerving.
Everyone called her Hajiedda because she had gone to Mecca, so she deserved honor and respect. There weren’t many women then who could afford a pilgrimage to the Sacred City. Hajiedda Saida had gotten rich through her first husband. He was a dubat, someone who fought alongside the Italians. Maryam’s father was as well. The hajiedda’s husband had beheaded many people. Sometimes Maryam wondered if her father also carried out massacres. He’d worked for every hard-earned cent. It was right, in Hajiedda Saida’s eyes, to make good use of that hard work. What was better than a lovely trip to Mecca? Someone warily pointed out to the great woman that it was dirty money. “Your husband killed innocents, and he did it for the whites.” Spitting on the ground, she said, “He killed infidels, gaalo.” At that point talk was useless. It was useless telling her that not all Ethiopians were gaalo and that Libyans most certainly weren’t. “But, Hajiedda, they were human beings, weren’t they?” Talking was useless since she instilled a reverential dread that made your bowels run.
What scared Maryam, though, wasn’t the bulky woman or her stature as a pilgrim to Mecca, but her unmoving eyes. She was indecently fat and had eyes that didn’t move in their sockets. They were threateningly fixed. If there weren’t all that womanly meat to prove it, Maryam would’ve mistaken the hajiedda for a chicken. The same unmoving eyes. The same threat. Maryam couldn’t stand chickens. They disturbed her. She felt overwhelmed by the world’s anxieties and something else as well. Aunt Ruqia made fun of her: “Look at how big and fat she is, and she’s afraid of a stupid animal.”
“It’s not stupid, Habaryar, you can see hell in their eyes.”
“Oh, come now, what are you saying! It’s one of Allah’s creatures, like any other. No, a little dumber, but it’s good, Maryam. It’s also very tasty.”
Maryam didn’t eat chickens and she tried never to cross paths with one, much less meet their gaze. She avoided it like the plague. She had a small coop at her house but tried ignoring it the same way she tried ignoring the day her aunt decided to wrench one of the stupid creatures’ necks and cook it for dinner. It was far worse seeing them killed. The body moved without the head. It ran deliriously as though still clinging to a pale illusion of life. Only that once had she seen her aunt yank a chicken’s neck. Atrocious. Never again, abadan. The animal’s body raced the hundred-meter dash, quick as lightning, while the face was stuck in a grimace of contracted pain. The eyes, however, were as fixed as they had been in life. Perhaps in life it was already a corpse. She was terrified. She didn’t eat chicken anymore.
She moved past the wooden door. “Hodi! Hodi! Anyone there?”
She saw plaited hair arranged around a trunk and a black Buddha with a brown scarf on her head. The Buddha was immobile. Her plaits, however, vibrated like the sound waves coming from a black saucepan nearby. She could hear the Quran being read aloud. It was about time for the evening prayer. Families were getting ready to eat and many were busy preparing for the following day’s ceremony. “Somalia is getting married. Oh, dear friends, Mogadishu and the nation are marrying, they’re marrying liberty. Independence! Independence!”
July 1 seemed far away to her. First she had to retrieve the ageen and then confront this fat woman.
Clack, clack, clack. Her small feet rapped against the ground. Clack, clack, clack. A gentle percussion.
“Good evening to you, Hajiedda Saida, my aunt would like a little ageen for tomorrow.”
“Howa is taking ageen to the signorina.” She said signorina in Italian. “It’s a party, a grand party, I suppose. And do you know why?”
Yes, she was right to be afraid. That dead chicken’s cadaverous eyes were glued to her and didn’t let go for a second. The woman’s eyes and immensity demanded a response. Maryam felt lost. She wanted to escape, vanish. She wanted to be invisible but realized that probably wouldn’t happen. She had rather long legs and a distinguished chin, a wide forehead and rebellious hair. Her lips bound her to the earth. Her chest bound her to her increasingly apparent femininity.
“Sai perché, bella signorina?” asked the black Buddha.
Maryam felt afire. She bubbled over with fear and sweated from her scalp. In her mind that perché the woman uttered resounded like a curse. It shouldn’t have been asked. The reason for the celebration was clear to everyone. There was no need for explanations. Everyone was happy, were they not? The perché was a fracture. In one blow, Maryam felt her certainty crumble. Could this woman not be happy? She didn’t understand. Are you not Somali? Then you must be happy today. It’s our day. She wanted to tell her this, or something of the sort. She wanted to draw the shape of their land with a fine point, to dance so as to make her part of the event and perhaps hug her to make her feel among friends. You don’t ask the reason for a birthright, she wanted to tell her. But she said nothing. Nothing came to mind, in fact. In response to the perché, she whispered discontentedly. She countered with a banal, practical explanation. An obvious truth.
The black Buddha looked at her condescendingly. She wasn’t satisfied. Maryam could see it in the way her cheeks moved arhythmically in disappointment. The Buddha was indignant and made it clear. To Maryam it seemed almost as though the woman’s size had tripled. She occupied more space around her.
Maryam felt like she was choking, an absurd inkling of death.
The big woman took the girl’s hands between her own. Maryam noticed that her hand was frigid. It repulsed her nearly as much as the chicken’s fixed eyes. They remained like that for a while, until Maryam almost started liking this unexpected cooling sensation in the overabundant heat of Mogadishu. Then the big woman spoke and all the fear Maryam thought was gone came full circle. Everything about the woman frightened her. Her bulk, her stare, the soft way she said, “You are all wrong. You, the people in this house, the people pampered by our politicians, the whole world.” Wickedly sneering, she said, “We’re only good for obeying. We serve no other purpose.”
The big woman began singing an old fascist war hymn. Maryam didn’t know how to say the words, but the rhythm had a combative style that she sort of enjoyed. One two, one two, one two.
The black Buddha projected beams of light. She was at the height of ecstasy.
In that moment Howa appeared. She
struck her mother with her trademark rosary, held firmly in her right hand. She struck her, whispering an exorcism.
“Silence, wicked woman. Na ga amus. Be still. Be still,” the crooked-nosed girl shouted.
The woman Buddha remained seated on the wicker mat. She sniggered. At her daughter’s every a‘udhu billahi, away Satan, she chuckled more cruelly.
She jerked and seized the girl’s rosary, pulling the young body to herself with inconceivable force.
She looked at her disdainfully. “You can’t even defend yourself from an old woman like me. You’re worthless. This little necklace has never helped you. It’s never saved you.”
The girl shook free from the bulky Buddha as if from a mass of annoying ants.
“Tomorrow is independence day, my dear friend,” Howa Rosario said to Maryam with a smile. Maryam was disoriented. She didn’t understand what had happened between the two women, but she thought it all very strange. Howa smiled. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said. And so it was.
THE FATHER
Majid knew where to find her: in front of the theater. He was joined by the white family’s driver, a young kinky-haired geerer named Hussein.
The whites had gone to hunt big game in the North and would return in five days. Mogadishu was layered with a fine, pink dust that promised fertility to the women and nightly bliss to the men.
“When you get there, do you want to be alone?” the geerer asked conspiratorially.
“If you don’t mind,” Majid said.
They were putting on an amusing comedy at the theater. The plot was in the title. Sirrey—Deceiver. A conventional story: a mother swindles a poor business owner by making him marry the ugliest of her daughters. The audience’s laughter could be heard outside and Hussein, despite not understanding a word, joined in the general mirth, shaking and laughing like a madman. Majid did not laugh. He never did.
