She was paid mostly in kind: mutton, beef or camel meat, a choice portion to cook at home for herself and her son. Mohamoud loathed crossing town with the fly-inviting raw meat wrapped in a sooty cloth. He hated being near the improvised cooking sites, four-stone arrangements on which cauldrons were placed, under which fire was lit. He was equally embarrassed by his mother’s habit of calling him and giving him food in front of all the women, with none of the other boys being asked to join him. He would scamper away somewhere, like a dog seeking a quiet place to chew a bone, unobserved. It embarrassed him to eat when no one else was doing so.
Mohamoud felt more relaxed when his mother wore the singer’s mask and chanted ballads praising the virtues of a bride or groom at an auspicious wedding. His mother would be clothed in her best and would smell of the charming scent of sandal and other cuuds, which he loved. He didn’t have to go with her on such days. She brought back cooked food herself after she performed.
She had an impressive rich voice and a gift for improvisation. She dressed well, far better than any other woman in the town, in fashionable frocks which she designed and sewed. It was agreed that the town’s male tailor was not as skilled as her, so the women brought along dresses he had made for her to reshape. Having no sewing-machine (she couldn’t afford to buy one), she did everything by hand. In matters of taste, the townswomen sought her opinion and when she gave it, they held it in high esteem. She led a very busy life, receiving and entertaining visitors.
The townspeople knew little about the woman’s past. It was her husband, not she, who hailed from G. She had come with him, already pregnant. They arrived in the back of a lorry, brown with dust of mysterious provenance. The lorry deposited them, leaving in its wake questions no one picked up from the dust-laden footpaths of the town. She was the wife of a son of the town, and suffice it to say the man had a disreputable history, as a famed gambler. He was a restless soul, of a breed and temperament that a sleepy town in the backwaters of Somalia could hold little interest for; and no work could be found for him. The tailor, who held a grudge against the woman, was reported to have said that the son of the town had brought a witch there.
The day after she gave birth to a son, the boy’s father left, to stow away on the first ship that called at this abandoned littoral. His parents were kind to the poor woman and the boy, named after his grandfather. Until he was five, Mohamoud shared an alool-bed with his mother, who was an asset to her in-laws, boasting a variety of talents unusual in a town like G. She showed no interest in other men, most of whom were fishermen down on their luck and surviving on remittances from relatives slaving away in petrodollar Arabia.
The town’s womenfolk displayed unlimited affection and trust for her. To show her gratitude, she taught their daughters how to knit, held free reading and writing classes for older women in her in-laws’ compound in the evenings. Her restlessness, which she put to good use, reminded people of the boy’s departed father. It made her in-laws wary, worried that she, too, might pack her meagre belongings and vanish for ever with their grandson. But she offered them no reason to suspect her of that.
His mother’s fame preceded Mohamoud at school, and some of the bigger bullies teased him incessantly A cruel boy named Ali described her as “an itinerant kitchen.” Trading insults with him, Mohamoud mentioned that All’s mother lived on the town’s welfare, virtually a beggar surviving on charity. Now who deserved to be heaped with scorn, a woman who was hard-working or one living on hand-outs? They got into a fight and Mohamoud hit the bully so hard he hurt his hand, but the other boy lost a front tooth. He might have been expelled had it not been for the testimony of a classmate named Mire, whose father was the district judge, a man worthy of the headmaster’s high respect. Mire placed the blame squarely on All, accusing him of provoking Mohamoud in the first place. The headmaster expelled Ali And Mire and Mohamoud became friends.
Mire gave his new friend an assortment of clothes he had outgrown; these the boy’s mother altered or mended, as necessary. As a gesture of appreciation, Mohamoud would bring to school the bursaliid doughnuts his mother prepared for him, sharing them with Mire. The two ate together often, Mire out of a sense of adventure, Mohamoud out of loyalty to their closeness and also because he hated eating alone. The other boys bought inedible cakes, hard as rocks, and bread from a zinc kiosk situated at a comer where the school’s dirt road met the town’s only thoroughfare. Mire’s father’s house, one of three stone houses, was in the government residential area. Mohamoud’s grandparents’ place was the end-house in a cul-de-sac. Because Mire read a lot, he encouraged his friend to borrow books.
A lorry arrived one day and a letter was delivered to Mohamoud’s mother, giving news of her husband, who had apparently been sighted in Mogadiscio having a ball of a time like a sailor on leave. A week later, a telegram arrived bearing his name and a message that she should come to the metropolis, bringing the boy. The first missive enclosed a photograph of a man with a deformed lower lip; no one doubted the authenticity and source, since it contained bits of gossip known exclusively to members of the family. The grandparents grew suspicious, uncertain that they would ever set eyes on their grandson again. It was Mire’s father’s intercession that made them concede that she could take the boy away.
On the eve of their departure, Mire, together with his father, came to wish them a safe journey. Mire’s father had arranged a lift for them in a government Land Rover returning to Mogadiscio. Not knowing how much help she would need on arrival in the capital, Mire’s father gave her letters of introduction to friends of his. The two young friends looked anxiously forward to their reunion, something of which they seemed certain.
The boy and his mother lodged with her people in the capital. There was no sign of the man who had sired him. The first few months were miserable for young Mohamoud, who missed his friend Mire, missed his grandparents, the small-town air and the house in which he had lived. Moreover, now that they were in Mogadiscio there was nothing special about his mother, for there were thousands of women like her. Seldom invited to be the honoured guest or to cook at weddings, she attended college to qualify as a teacher, and later found a job in a school.
Two years later, Mire and Mohamoud were reunited in Mogadiscio, but they lived at either end of the sprawling city and could not visit each other as much as they wished. When term restarted, Mohamoud transferred to Mire’s school, consenting to walk four kilometres there and back every day.
It came to pass that there were three other boys who bore the same first, second and third names as our friend Mohamoud, which proved confusing. One day a teacher who was calling the roll wondered how on earth one was supposed to distinguish them. Being unusually full of mischief that day, Mire gave his friend the nickname “Bosaaso.” And, although Mohamoud insisted he did not come from the town of that name but from G., the nickname stuck.
Certain that Duniya was with him and had enjoyed hearing the story of his childhood, Bosaaso postponed the instant when he opened his eyes. Somewhere in the echoey two-storey house where he lived alone, a door opened and banged shut, a bath-tub was run and a toilet flushed. His face tightened in the sad expectation of finding her gone or that she might not hear him or answer his call. Yet with his eyes still closed, his outstretched hand informed him that in his bed there was a depression to his right, where she had slept; and his cheeks felt stroked, touched by her lips, kissed.