At the mention of Bosaaso’s name Duniya relaxed.
Meanwhile, Nasiiba’s tone of voice had lost its distinctiveness. She was saying, “Your face needs a touch of make-up, a thin coat, that is all.” And she was coming menacingly in Duniya’s direction, carrying a variety of brushes and bottles.
“No make-up for me, thank you.”
A moment later Nasiiba was back, carrying a pair of ear-rings. “Whose are these?” wondered Duniya suspiciously.
“They are yours actually, given to you by Uncle Abshir.”
Duniya nodded her head, acknowledging the truth of the statement.
“If you believe that your ears stick out like the flagposts of a football stadium, perhaps this pair of ear-rings will correct that.” They were very pretty, a circular shape with a five-cornered star fitted into the frame, and painted blue.
By the time they heard Bosaaso’s car-horn announcing his arrival, Duniya had the chance to give her head a few touches here and there, and was feeling comfortable in the dress she had chosen and which Nasiiba had approved. It was just as she was joining Bosaaso who remained in the car that Duniya said to Nasiiba, “Please give my condolences to Fariida, who I understand is the foundling’s mother, and tell her to come and visit us whenever she feels like it.” And Duniya left the house in haste, eager not to be interrogated by her daughter.
And we went to a restaurant.
The moment the waiter who came to take their order left them alone in the half-dark, they kissed, with only a paraffin-lamp providing a semblance of light. The desire to kiss had caught them unprepared, with the suddenness of a hay-fever sneeze: it was brain-clearing. They embraced a long time, their breath merging, and each had what it took to make the other comfortable and vulnerable.
Silent, not kissing, they now sat on a straw-mat on the ground, under a thorny tent of acacia bushes, a paraffin-lamp hanging down from a branch in the tree, its light not interfering with their privacy. Any Mogadiscian wanting undisturbed quiet, or in search of the city’s best lamb and rice, indeed any resident of Mogadiscio desiring to taste the romanticized image of untamed jungles: such people came here, men and women in love, foreigners in need of local colour or visitors seeking meal-souvenirs to remind them of Somalia. Needless to say, these entrepreneurial kitchens attracted Mogadiscio’s local motorists and for a very good reason.
The waiters carried lanterns, adhering strictly to codes of behaviour guaranteeing absolute privacy to the clients patronizing the establishment. They moved quietly, they cleared their throats or coughed as they approached a tree-tent in which a couple nestled intimately against one another or in each other’s embrace.
Duniya got to her feet, which were wobbly, once she caught her breath, after what amounted to the longest kiss, the most passionate one to date. Maybe, giddiness made her lose the sense of where she was, with whom or why Her head spun, her legs were not stable enough to support the weight of her swaying body and yet she was on cloud eleven, remembering no joy comparable to this. Had the long, passionate kissing dazed her so that she had taken hold of Bosaaso’s car keys as she scrambled to her feet, something of which she had been unaware? He was now saying to her, “And where are we driving off to, may I ask?”
“But I don’t even know how to drive!” she replied.
“In that case, I will teach you how to,” he said.
And she sobered up instantly.
She sat down away from him, recalling her conversation with Nasiiba who had offered to teach her to swim. Was she, Duniya, being prepared for a higher state of completeness, as it were, being taught to swim and to drive too? She pushed the car keys towards him.
As though in response to her unfriendly gesture, the heavens thundered threateningly, and a mad wind blew. Bosaaso rose to transfer the paraffin lamp from the place higher up in the tree to a spot much lower, out of the current of air. While looking up at him Duniya saw comets flying earthwards, falling, as the Somalis say, on jinns and non-Muslims. She gave a start when a bolt of lightning struck the skies, making her think of the three-thonged whip farmers crack to chase away birds feeding on their crops.
As he sat down beside her, he said, “What fireworks!”
“These are merely falling stars dropping on jinns: isn’t that what Muslims say?” she asked, taking hold of his outstretched hand and fondling it. She didn’t know what she was saying or why.
“The Koran informs us that these fiery comets are hurdled at nosey jinns eaves-dropping at the gates of heaven,” Bosaaso commented.
“Very naughty of them!” said Duniya.
When the heavens stopped thundering and the shooting-stars dropped no more, Duniya told herself that maybe the jinns, having become less inquisitive, had come down to earth and were whispering sweet nothings in her ears, which she touched on impulse.
“Is one of your ear-rings missing, or did you come out wearing only one?” he asked. “You couldn’t have lost it in the car?”
“My ear-rings?” And she felt her ear-lobes, one at a time. “I arrived wearing a pair of them,” she informed him, but made no move.
“I am certain I didn’t.”
He was immediately on his knees, searching for the missing earring by feel, in the half-dark, because he was sure she wouldn’t want him to bring down the paraffin lamp. The uneven roughness of the straw-mat pricked his palms. Nevertheless he remained undeterred even when she displayed little interest in recovering the missing item. “When do you think you lost it?” he asked.
She decided to frame the moment of their passion in her private memory, choosing not to speak of it lest she should devalue it. And yet she was definite the ear-ring had dropped then, a few moments prior to the instant when the heavens let go a fireworks of falling stars. “I can’t recall when,” she said.
He went nearer her. “I remember the shape of the ear-ring’s star, painted light blue, enclosed in an all-encompassing circle of silver.” He was so close to her she could hear his breathing, and could feel the warmth of his body. He took hold of her hand; she let him. “They were beautiful on you.”
She said nothing, because his head was moving upwards, towards her mouth, and their lips were preparing to encounter in a kiss of insane passion. She sensed a tremor running through her: what flames, she thought to herself. Supporting his weight, which was lighter than she had imagined, he returned again and again and again, asking for more and more. Finally she gave him a gentle push, saying, “Please do not rush me.”
He breathed loudly and explosively as if he had been under water for a long time and had just come back to the surface. He sat up, his face spreading with an understanding grin. She would have thought him coarse if he had spoken a single word of explanation or of apology. And both were glad when neither said anything.
She studied the shadow his head cast, a head tilting to the side. He sucked his lips in silence. Looking at the night outside, beyond the paraffin lamp’s moving shades, Duniya could see the silhouettes of lantern-carrying figures swinging in and out of her sight, like falling stars taking an eternity to reach the earth before exploding.
Silent, they watched an approaching, gyrating light. The footsteps of the waiter were followed by the noise of an idling diesel engine, probably the vehicle of a client being escorted to a tree-tent. Then they heard low voices, that of a man and a woman placing their orders. Then quiet.
Bosaaso said, “If it were my mother who had lost an ear-ring, she might have hummed a tune and danced a sad song about such a wasteful loss. If it were my Afro-American friend who had misplaced it, then the song and dance would have assumed a rhetorical dimension. And if it had been Yussur, she would have given a moan of regret, and would somehow have brought her mother into the talk, to blame her for it. But you? You say nothing, and show no worry in the world.”