“Yes. He is.”
“You are very generous,” she told Duniya, “God bless you.”
Duniya felt awkward and self-conscious. It was then that she noticed that the old woman had a long hair on her upper lip, a singular hair looking out of a mole, dark as the most fertile of earths. Duniya couldn’t help focusing on the hair, active as an insect’s antennae, as the old woman spoke. “My grand-daughter goes to the same school as your twin-daughter, so that is how I know you. Maybe you know my granddaughter, the one with the non-Somali name — Marilyn. You won’t believe it, but she was named for me, and my own is Maryam. She tells me that Marilyn is the name of a famous actress who’s now dead. You know the young these days, bringing mysteries and foreign ways into our lives.”
“Yes, I know Marilyn,” said Duniya.
The old woman sat on the chair Duniya indicated. “J have come to offer our house’s blessing. I have come ahead of the others to tell you not to hesitate to ask if you need someone to look after the baby when you go to work and your children to school,” said the old woman.
“It’s very kind of you to make such a welcome offer, which I am glad to accept.” And Duniya saw the old woman eyeing the baby with understandable anxiety.
“We have lots of help,” said the woman. “There are a number of young girls in our house; we can always raise a couple more hands if necessary. So please do not hesitate to come when you need somebody to relieve you.”
Duniya assured her, “I won’t hesitate. Thank you.”
Then the old woman stretched out her hand to touch the baby. On the back of her wrist there was a ganglion, prominent as a hump. “You have not gone to work today, have you, for instance?”
“My not going to work had nothing to do with the baby,” said Duniya.
“I mean, you may not be able to go to work tomorrow?”
The old woman was anticipating quick decisions, things Duniya had not given thought to before. This was because a lot had not been thought out, and no one knew what would happen, least of all Duniya.
“Your daughter knows where we live, not very far from here,” the woman was saying to Duniya, “remember, my grand-daughter’s name is Marilyn,” and she shook her head sadly. “Mind you, it is not that I begrudge this American actress anything, but I always wished my grand-daughter to remember that she was named for me, and not after some American nude embellishing frustrated men’s fantasies and rooms; besides, I will not live for ever. But there you are.”
Unceremoniously, she got up to leave, taking each step as though it were an ordeal She stopped in the doorway to say, “Remember not to hesitate. We can help provide a baby-sitter.”
“Yes, I’ll remember the name Marilyn,” Duniya promised.
A man was saying Hoodi-hoodi and another was talking non-stop, trying to make a point. Bosaaso was announcing that he and Mataan were back, and the young man was eager to impress the older one. When the old woman walked past them, on her way out, in deference to her age they stepped out of her way and fell silent.
Then Bosaaso said anxiously, “The inspector, who sends his best wishes, says no one has reported a missing baby, nor has anyone else reported seeing one near a rubbish-bin. He says he is grateful to be informed and glad to know the foundling is in your capable hands, and he trusts that his presence won’t create inconvenienced.”
Duniya nodded her head silently.
“But bureaucracy being what bureaucracy is,” Bosaaso continued, “the inspector suggested you and I register as co-guardians, since it was I who reported the case in person and signed the statement.”
“You and I as co-guardians of the foundling?” Duniya said, asking herself what, in the future, this would mean. She also wondered whether or not he had taken her for granted.
“The inspector wondered if Bosaaso was willing to put down his name as co-responsible — that’s the word he used — just to be on the safe side,” Mataan said, “and that’s what we did, put your names down as co-responsibles for the foundling.”
There was something she did not like about the whole thing, but she was not sure what. Could it be that an unmarried woman, in her mid-thirties, with school-going teenagers would not be able to look after another baby, a foundling at that? Could it be that the inspector who knew her thought putting down Bosaaso’s name as co-responsible would look good on paper?
“The inspector confessed,” Bosaaso said, “that he had no idea about the legal status of such foundlings and those who happen to find them, since all this is a recent phenomenon, as he put it, part of this permissive society’s reward to itself.”
Mataan added: “I quoted to the inspector the Somali proverb: Whoever finds an unclaimed item, let that person appropriate it.”
“The inspector took us to task, asking lots of questions we had no way of answering,” explained Bosaaso. “Frankly it didn’t help matters when Mataan said Nasiiba knew a lot more than she’d told.”
“What made you make such a stupid remark?” Duniya said to Mataan.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” said Mataan, “but the truth is Nasiiba knows a lot more than she has told us, and she must be made to tell it.”
“Why?”
“For the good of everybody concerned.”
Duniya placed the sleeping baby gently back in his cot and turned on Mataan. “Do I ever ask you to tell me all you know about… everything and everybody? Aren’t there areas of your life that remain your private affair? Do I ever ask you how you spend your time or who your friends are, Mataan?”
“No,” he agreed, “but this is different.”
“Suppose she says she won’t tell us anything. What am I to do? Beat her up? Throw the foundling back into the rubbish-bin? I won’t press Nasiiba to tell me anything she doesn’t want me to know,” said Duniya. That dealt with, she said to Bosaaso, “How did the two of you manage to register the foundling?”
“I made a statement, which I signed,” said Bosaaso. “Because you weren’t with us, Mataan countersigned it. We gave as much detail as we had. The inspector opened a file labelled ABANDONED BABY CARE OF DUNIYA. He told us he would release word to the press, especially Radio Mogadiscio. We have to report back to him once we have taken the baby to the hospital for a thorough medical examination, at our own expense, which I didn’t object to. The idea is to allow time for the foundling’s parent or parents to have a change of heart; and because a paediatrician might find reasons why the parents abandoned him in the first place. In other words, is the baby well or ill?”
“And then what?” Duniya asked.
“A board will decide whether to entrust us with responsibility for raising the foundling, since we are in effect co-responsibles.”
“You and I?” Duniya said, feeling amused, humoured.
“And then following an appearance before a board, it will be decided if we are fit to be his parents.”
“On the condition that we are married?” Duniya asked.
“Maybe.”
“Enough of that,” Duniya said.
They fell silent and no one spoke for quite a time. Then the baby’s lungs exploded with a most furious cry surpassing in tension the one he emitted earlier when left alone with Duniya. As everyone began to fuss over him, their voices silenced him, comforted him.
To help quiet the foundling, Mataan told an Arab folktale:
One day Juxaa, the wise fool, invited a number of friends for a meal but discovered that he didn’t own a large enough cauldron to cook in. He borrowed one from a neighbour, promising he would return it.
The following afternoon Juxaa returned the huge pot he had been lent, but he put a smaller cauldron inside it. The neighbour reminded him that he had loaned him only the big one. Maybe the small pot had been borrowed from another neighbour?