On the third day, something unusual happened. The cow walked into Musa’s compound and refused to be driven away. No amount of cajoling or caning would convince it to return to its lawful owner. Being of generous spirit, Musa conceded that the beast be milked where it was, in his compound, though Harun made it clear he would get not even a drop of milk.
All that night Musa listened to his children’s hungry cries and his wife’s curses. But just after midnight, they heard a gentle knock on their door. With a mixture of anxiety and hopeful anticipation, Musa answered. He was most surprised to find the cow wanting to be milked. What was he to do? His wife remarked that fortune favours the weak among men, who know not how to take advantage of it. For his part, Musa had made a vow never to steal. He pushed the door shut, leaving the cow where it stood, unmilked.
The next morning, he explained to Harun what had happened, but Harun accused him of theft and lying. Musa’s wife said, “What did I tell you?” But when Harun tried to milk the cow that day, everyone was in for another surprise. The cow would not submit to being touched by him.
Not knowing what to do, Harun appealed to Musa, who offered to milk the cow for him. But what would be in it for him?
Harun said: “A third of what the cow yields is yours.”
Musa approached the cow with caution. It remained placid, eyes large as onions from a fertile land. And it didn’t kick, but sub-mitted to his elaborate caresses, its udder getting heavier and fuller by the second. Although he couldn’t explain why even to his wife, Musa called the cow by a name: he had designated the cow Marwa! In short, it offered thrice as much as it had done during the pre-famine days. Two-thirds went to Harun, a third, as agreed, to Musa.
But Harun was displeased. He argued: “If Musa is a magician and calls the cow Marwa, to which it responds favourably, so can I.” However, when that evening Harun called the cow Marwa, it kicked him so hard in the shin that he dropped the receptacle, breaking it. Musa again indicated his generous willingness to try his hand. He milked the cow, which gave four times as much milk as before and now he called it Safa. Yet he swore to his wife that on neither occasion had he had the slightest idea what to call the animal until the moment he spoke the correct name.
That evening, a group of travellers paid the two families an unexpected visit. It was the Night of Qadr, believed to be the most blessed night of the year, and the men from the other hamlets commented on the abundance of the cow’s milk. All night Musa remained silent. Not so Harun; he talked a great deal, boasting that the cow was his. One of the men wondered why, if it was his, it was in his neighbour’s compound. Harun responded that it preferred lodging with his friend; “You know how cows are,” Harun said, trying to be humorous, and then laughing uneasily.
The following morning the cow was gone. The travellers testified on oath that they saw coming out of Musa’s compound not a cow but a man, handsome and tall, adorned in the saintly robes of Friday-mosque white.
Then it began to rain in abundance, and for a while there was respite from the famine, although not immediately The other families returned to their homesteads, reduced in number, for some had starved to death on their way to the feeding centres, and some decided to remain in the cities where the famine had driven them.
Harun and Musa listened to their stories. When their turn came, Harun told his version of their story, but Musa would not open his mouth to say anything. Someone asked Musa if it was true that Khadr, the miracle-performing saint, Elijah’s alter-ego, had turned himself into a cow to test them?
Musa wouldn’t comment.
Taariq Axmad
Somehow Duniya became restless directly she finished reading the article, and in an instant she was turning the whole room upside down, emptying cupboards and drawers. Yet she didn’t know why she was doing this, had no idea what had got into her, or what she might be searching for.
She opened her daughter’s drawers, one at a time, meticulously replacing things where she found them. In the second drawer she came across an Iranian magazine for Muslim women, Mahjouba, tucked away and hidden under an unwashed pile of the young girl’s underthings. Duniya suspected the copy of the radical Islamic magazine to be there for unholy purposes, and wasn’t surprised when her search rewarded her with wads of cash, in Somali notes, tied together with a rubber band. For a moment Duniya appeared so disheartened, she did not know what had struck her.
She recovered from her shock only after counting the money and remembering that she had herself given it to Nasiiba, to settle the family’s outstanding monthly bills with the owner of the district’s general store. Did it mean Nasiiba had forgotten to clear last month’s debts?
In a fit of annoyance, Duniya changed into outdoor clothes and walked the few hundred metres to the general store. Speechless, incapable of returning her neighbours’ greetings, her tongue lay inert inside her mouth. But the shop was closed for the day, because its owner was out of town.
Duniya returned home, angrier than before.
II. A Baby in a Rubbish-bin
7
Duniya returns home to discover that a baby, apparently abandoned by its mother, has been found by her daughter.
Duniya tripped and nearly fell forward, regaining her balance just in time. She was entering her house when her foot, residing loosely in open-toed sandals, kicked the tips of her exposed digits sore against the lintel of the door. Calling down Koranic curses on wicked jinns lying in her path to cause her stride to falter, Duniya bent to touch the chipped nail of one big toe. What was making her so blundering and unsteady? She stumbled at the memory of knocking things over in Dr Mire’s cubicle yesterday. She also remembered tumbling headlong over Taariq’s brick barrier on the night they decided to marry. And there was no avoiding recalling the image of Zu-bair, her first husband, wobbling his way about, toppling things with a blind man’s walking-stick. Duniya solemnly vowed to herself to keep her balance and not fall.
Just then her giddiness climbed to a plateau, and she sensed the presence of a spirit paying her home an ethereal visit. She could not explain even to herself how she arrived at this conclusion, yet she was sure that she was bearing witness to something extraordinary. And then she heard the distinct whimper of a baby asserting its existence, a whimper coming from the direction of the room she shared with Nasiiba. Perhaps she was imagining being at the hospital, where perhaps such an infant had just been delivered, issuing a cry soft as the touch of afterbirth. She moved toward the open door, postponing self-questioning. At the doorway she stayed still for a couple of seconds, she saw a baby draped in a towel and lying on Nasiiba’s lap. One instant Duniya was going to say something terrible, and the next her tongue abruptly turned turtle and she was saying, “Isn’t it cute?” She was stretching her hand out to receive it, but Nasiiba seemed reluctant to part with the baby.