Given the difference in age and temperament, Zubair and Duniya got on better than either had imagined possible. For the young bride, the responsibility of looking after a blind old man was daunting, a wearying task, like learning a new language one had no real interest in. She had to master a limited vocabulary and a body-language that was efficient and precise. She got used to his being given everything, got accustomed to the fact that she could never ask him to pass her the salt, the sugar or to switch off the light, though he might have coped were it absolutely necessary.
He made several adjustments to accommodate her. And when he resumed praying, Duniya took up a position in such a way that she became his point of reference, and so it was before her that he prostrated himself in his worship of Allah, and to her that he addressed all his devotions.
He was a huge man, physical, loving. He had frequent naps, putting Duniya in mind of an overgrown child who collapsed exhausted in the midst of play There was something child-like about his mouth, with which he seemed forever preoccupied, like a toothless old man who chews his own saliva, biting the inside of his cheeks. But Zubair had all his teeth: and he was healthy, considering his age.
She bore him twins, Mataan (meaning the twin) looking very like him, and Nasiiba the spitting image of Duniya’s brother Abshir. (Once, albeit in a light-hearted manner, Duniya asked Dr Mire if it were possible for a woman to carry in her womb two-egg twins emanating from two different sources, when one of the men had never made love to the woman in question.)
One evening Duniya wanted to know if the jinns in Zubair’s eyes were still on sentry duty guarding the door to his sight. Zubair described them as two immobile beings, supposing his blindness to be bom of his former wife’s vindictiveness. He explained to Duniya that although they still blocked the entrance to his vision, the jinns nevertheless appeared to have tired of their spirited pranks since his marriage to her.
He died in his sleep, aged sixty. At the time Duniya had the twins at her breasts. His voice, thick, mumbled something like, “Do you mind if we switch off the light?” just before he was called away by death. In retrospect she regretted not asking if the jinns had dismounted briefly, letting him see. Otherwise why ask that she turn off the lights? She was in the rocking-chair, breast-feeding her two hungry monstrosities, and anything she said would have sounded awkward. Angry that the dazzling brightness of the electric light had made sleep unthinkable, she turned to say something. But he expired before she managed to speak her piece. A fortnight later she was on a plane to Mogadiscio.
So many years later in Mogadiscio, reminiscing!
Just before she was ready for bed, having showered and brushed her teeth, power returned and so did the half-collared kingfisher. Duniya hadn’t made up her mind if it was the same bird, when it flew away without alighting. Duniya got out of bed to switch off the lights that had come on in the kitchen, the toilet, the courtyard.
No sooner had she done so and returned to the darkened room than she heard a car door open and then close. Half-kneeling behind the partly drawn curtain, she watched as Mataan, her seventeen-year-old son, got out of a car with a woman at the wheel. They were talking in low voices, no doubt arranging future assignations. But where was his bicycle? Had it been stolen? Or had he felt unsafe riding it home because it had no lights?
The woman drove away before Duniya managed a good look at her face. Mataan waved enthusiastically until the car disappeared around the comer. What mattered, Duniya told herself, remembering what Nasiiba had said, what mattered was not whether the woman was older than he but whether they were comfortable with each other.
Mataan moved in the direction of their door, to let himself in. Tall, he walked with his back straight, like a man returning home to a waiting wife, a man who must remove all traces of his other life, in which another woman figures prominently. Mataan wiped his face and gave his hair a soft pat, touching his recently combed hair. As he came closer, his mother could see that he had his bicycle-chain in his left hand and his books in his right. From where she was, his bicycle-chain resembled a hunting-crop.
When the key turned in the outside door, Duniya tiptoed away from Nasiiba’s bed on which she had been kneeling, thinking: Shall I call his name or wait until he has hung his talismanic bicycle-chain on the nail above the entrance to his room?
In the event, she did not call his name. She let him shower, let him wash off the impurity of sex (Islam is very particular about a man’s body coming into contact with a woman’s and both must wash after love-making). But when she heard his steps going past the Women’s Room door, she spoke his name.
“Who is it?” his startled voice asked.
“It is I,” Duniya replied.
He made it clear that he didn’t want to talk.
“Goodnight then,” she said.
“Dream well, Mother,” he called.
Duniya did not wake when Nasiiba sneaked into her own bed. Once she fell asleep, Bosaaso came to her to tell her his story.
MOGADISCIO (AGENCIES)
Plans are under way for a huge relief operation in the war-torn drought-stricken north of the Somali Republic, where the rains have failed for the past four years. The airlift of emergency food aid will begin in about a week, a senior government official said. A regional official confirmed that between 300 and 500 people were dying daily in some of the larger localities and many more would starve to death unless emergency airlifts reached the affected area soon.
5
Bosaaso, at first dreaming then awake, relates aspects of his life history to Duniya, who is asleep and perhaps dreaming him too.
Bosaaso had been up for some time, turning and tossing in his bed, eager for dawn. He had dreamt of a brightly-coloured eagle soaring high, unprepared to alight on any of the tall eucalyptus trees in the vicinity Below, where he waited for the handsome bird to descend on a branch so he could take aim and shoot it, was a long-legged red plover, chattering its customary oaths, repeating its standard vow in the ugliest sequence of notes ever sung by a bird.
In his dream, a small boy carrying a kilo or so of uncooked meat on an uncovered platter walked into view, and the alert eagle came down in a sudden swoop, going not for the blood-dripping raw flesh but for the child’s brain. The boy fell to the ground in fear, dropping the meat. Several women emerged from behind the acacia bushes and formed a mournful circle around the prostrate boy. One woman stood apart, a woman wearing a patchwork of peacock-coloured clothes, with feathers in her hair. The others hushed when she beckoned. She took from the folds of her clothing a talismanic pebble which she placed near the boy’s nostrils. The child jerked with life-returning spasms. Then he rose and, unafraid, walked away, taking with him the platter of meat, now dusty.
Anxiety in Bosaaso’s chest stirred up a dusty cough and, still asleep, he sneezed. He diverted his mind by telling himself (and Duniya in her dream, of which he was part) the story of an only son of an only parent. The boy’s given name was Mohamoud.
He was a most fortunate child. He had a mother who sang well, being endowed with a beautiful voice, who cooked wonderfully and was an excellent seamstress. These three assets made her a frequent and welcome guest at weddings and all manner of events at which her services were in demand. She was Mohamoud’s single parent, his father having stowed away on a ship — everybody thought — never to be heard of again.
The boy and his mother lived in the small coastal town of G., not far from Cape Guardafui, on the east of the Somali peninsula. They were a feature of the locality, always together, colourful as the clothes she stitched herself, like itinerant gypsies, ready at the drop of a hint to entertain an audience. There was something decidedly ambivalent about the boy’s attitude to his mother. He loved her to sing her songs and he loved the food she prepared; on the other hand, he felt it degrading that he should accompany her everywhere, tagging along at the feasts where she performed.