He saluted her several times, albeit from a civic distance. Before long he was saying, “Please accept my belated condolences for the premature passing away of the foundling. May God’s blessing be on your house, Amen!”
She didn’t know why she felt ridiculous, but she did. And she thanked him.
He uttered several more salvos, then touched his face with his forefingers; a little later his cupped hands moved down towards his chin, praying all the time, his lips astir with the letter S and on their heels a number of Arabic gutturals. Aw-Cumar proffered his hand at last, a hand which was soft and of an extraordinary roundness, no joints, no cartilage or bone anywhere. In fact he gave away his whole wrist as though he wished one to keep it for him while he dealt with some other business more lucrative than a hand-clasp. Duniya remarked to herself that he had a bracelet of extra flesh around what might once have been a wrist. And a circular expanse of finger-nails. “What can I do for you?” he said, his hand in hers, and as though he wouldn’t want it back.
“I’ve come to pay my respects, since I haven’t called round for a long time, and also to find out the situation with my account,” she said.
“It’s very kind of you,” he replied.
Meanwhile Duniya’s eyes went past him to take in the shop. In these days of galloping inflation, famines, foreign currency restrictions and corrupt market transactions, shops like Aw-Cumar’s had two opposing attitudes towards their clients. There were those whom they treated with special benevolence and to whom they sold hard-to-obtain goods. And there were those to whom they displayed empty shelves, to whom, shaking their heads, the store-owners would say that such and such an item had not been available on the market for months or years, whichever was the more credible. Duniya belonged to the category of customers whom he favoured. Moreover Aw-Cumar was attached to the twins, especially Nasiiba, with whom he often dealt, whose moods he could read, and from whom he occasionally bought some of Duniya’s US dollars at a concessionary rate.
“Do you have sugar?” she said.
He said neither yes nor no but, “Anything else?” while he was still in deep thought, maybe praying. She looked up at the gaping shelves in the hope that their emptiness might inspire her. “What about rice?”
But then both of them fell silent when a neighbour, clearly not one of Aw-Cumar’s favourite clients, came in and asked if there was any likelihood of his selling to her half a pound of sugar for any sum he wished to name. Aw-Cumar’s head shook with actorly sadness, saying, “I’m afraid I have no sugar, not even for my own family’s consumption.”
When the woman-customer had been gone a good few minutes, Aw-Cumar called one of his daughters who rushed in through the back door, coming as she did from the inner compound at the rear of the store, a highly valued property belonging to the shop. Her father’s hand lay on the young girl’s coxcomb-hairdo as he turned to Duniya asking, “How much sugar and how many kilos of rice would you like?”
“Three kilos of sugar, or is that too much to ask for?” she hesitated.
“Five?”
“Ail right, five.”
“And three kilos of rice, the best, imported from China?”
“Thank you,” she said.
And there he was, waiting for her to order anything her heart desired.
“Would you like some flour?” he inquired of her, when she couldn’t come up with any orders.
“Do you have flour?”
“Would ten kilos do?”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Would you like a kilo of raisins?”
“At times I wonder why you are so kind to me.”
“You’ve been kind, a mother to an abandoned baby,” he said, and after a pause continued, “And don’t think of thanking me, for what I have is yours and if I am in short supply myself then I cannot help it.” He scribbled something on a piece of paper, gave the chit to his daughter whose coxcomb he held onto as he said, “Take this to your stepmother and bring back what is written here. All right?” But he wouldn’t let go of the girl until he insisted that Duniya maybe ask for the universe and he, Aw-Cumar would serve it to her, right off his counter, heaven, hell and all.
“That’s all for now, thanks,” she stammered.
And the young girl rushed out of the store through the door in the rear, with a shriek of childish excitement. There were repeated cries of anger as she interrupted her sisters’ game of hopscotch.
“May I have the accounts book please?” said Duniya.
Aw-Cumar opened and closed a couple of drawers, looking for it. Duniya remembered an embarrassing incident when Mataan, thrilled at the arithmetic abilities of which he was proud, had taken it upon himself to do the totalling up of Duniya’s debts, discovering an ugly discrepancy. This caused both Aw-Cumar and Duniya a great deal of distress, and he swore he hadn’t done it deliberately From then on, it was agreed that Nasiiba and no one else would enter in the accounts book any sum owed to Aw-Cumar.
“Here,” he said presently, giving her the accounts book.
The sum owed to him was entered in Nasiiba’s hand in this exercise book, with one of its covers already torn off. Like a door hanging on a half-broken hinge, the other cover held, more or less, on the teeth of additional staples punched on the side. Nasiiba had scribbled in ink the words “Duniya & Family: Accounts.”
Opening and turning the pages Duniya discovered that all the bills had been settled by Nasiiba, all until a week ago. Duniya’s look was of a disturbed kind, noting to herself that perhaps the money in the Iranian Islamic magazine had a wicked story behind it.
Aw-Cumar said, “Is something worrying you?”
“No, nothing.”
“Please tell me what’s bothering you, because I can see your eyes going pale with preoccupation,” he said. “Let me assure you that your accounts book is clean like the slates of a saint at Judgement Day, not a single stain anywhere.”
Improvising, Duniya said, “I’ve come bearing sad news.”
“Oh?”
“We are moving out of the district.”
Aw-Cumar’s features displayed a genuine sorrow. “But we shall miss you!”
“The children and I will miss you too.”
He was a most discreet man. Duniya suspected that Aw-Cumar was in on the gossip being circulated in the neighbourhood, about a wealthy US-returned Somali who was infatuated with “our midwife.” But he made no reference to it, not even when he inquired if they knew where they would be moving.
When Aw-Cumar’s daughter brought back Duniya’s provisions in a large carrier bag advertising a brand of cigarettes, Duniya asked, “How much do we owe you for this blessed manna from the heavens of your kindness?”
His lips trembled with sums which he committed instantly to paper; finally he added the sums up in his head and gave her the total. Duniya entered and initialled it in the exercise book.
She was feeling ill at ease because she had lied to him. After all she had not come with the intention of buying any provisions, only to take a look at the accounts book Was this why she was becoming garrulous? And why didn’t she leave directly after she had received her supply of food? “My brother Abshir is paying us a visit shortly and we are very excited at the thought and eager to welcome him,” she volunteered.