He said humbly, “I don’t know,” meeting her eyes for the first time.
“Whose is it really?”
“The scooter is owned by an older man who likes to borrow my bicycle, so he can keep fit. I seldom make the exchange, Mother.”
“I wish you wouldn’t borrow things for my sake,” Duniya said.
He looked away. After a while he turned and her eyes fell on his young face, and a thought crossed her mind, one she couldn’t explain: that Mataan looked like a son. Whereas Nasiiba put her in mind of a young woman likely to become a mother one day, Mataan had the look of a sturdy young tree, firm and steadfast as somebody’s young son. To be labelled “Mataan: a son!” like a clothes dummy of a tailor’s with a price tag on it. Duniya reasoned that he would surely eventually marry a woman older than him.
“How much does a new-motor-scooter cost?” she asked.
“You can’t get them because of foreign currency restrictions.”
“How much would a good second-hand one fetch?”
He was silent, then said, “Let’s first find a home to move to.”
Nasiiba and Yarey had come on the scene, so Duniya and Mataan adapted themselves to the new arrivals. Yarey was in a chatty mood. She said, “You must go to see an Italian film called The Tree of the Wooden Clogs. Nasiiba and I saw it yesterday and we loved it, didn’t we, Naasi?”
Duniya guessed that Yarey’s lines had been given her by Nasiiba and had been rehearsed to the last comma, question and exclamation mark. Mataan, too, suspected this to be the case.
Yarey went on, “And you must see the big house Bosaaso lives in all by himself, Duniya, a big garden, a very large kitchen, larger than this place we live in, the four of us.”
Mataan left in haste, and this disturbed Nasiiba. “What was he talking about, Mummy?” she asked.
To avert early morning confrontation between the twins, Duniya suggested that Nasiiba hurry, for it was impolite to make the taxi wait longer than absolutely necessary.
Nasiiba was of a mind to disregard her mother’s advice, and she repeated her question, “What was he talking about?”
“Mataan has borrowed a motor-scooter to give me a lift,” Duniya replied, regretting it the instant the words had left her lips.
Nasiiba was dismissive of the man who owned the Vespa, saying, “Do you know what people say?”
“No, what do they say?”
“The man is a homosexual, an old man in his fifties who prefers the company of younger boys. Did Mataan tell you that?”
There was the clichéd silence of a pin-dropping quality.
The quarrel was cut short by the arrival of the taxi taking Nasiiba and Yarey to their respective schools. Nasiiba opened the windows overlooking the road and shouted something to the man whom she called Axmad. Meanwhile she and Yarey stumbled into their school-uniforms, each reminding the other to be quick. “Remember we’re going house-hunting this afternoon,” Duniya said to Nasiiba.
“Right-oh.” Nasiiba mimicked an American film heroine dashing out of a room.
Mataan and Duniya had breakfast together, Mataan making the omelette and tea, and afterwards clearing the trays and doing the washing-up, including his sisters’. Duniya was undecided whether to wear her hair covered or uncovered. Given that she would be on a motor scooter and not in a car, would her hair be a scatter of plaits, waving in all directions, like the hands of a bad swimmer drowning? Thinking of their safety (she was actually thinking about seat-belts as well as Bosaaso), she wondered if it was possible to find helmets at such short notice. It was too late in the day to worry about it.
“Tell me, do you like Bosaaso?” she said to Mataan.
Mataan hesitated, then said, “I do — really.”
“What do you like about him?”
“I feel comfortable with him.”
“Comfortable in what sense?” He appeared to be having difficulty with his words; he stammered, every consonant proving a hurdle. The brown in his eyes darkened.
She had almost given up on getting any answer out of him as she asked, “Do you like him as much as you liked Taariq when you were a lot smaller?” And she felt foolish saying this.
“As it happens, I always prefer having friends older than me, and Bosaaso is the sort of man whose friendship I would tend to cultivate, someone whose learning I would emulate. I don’t regret my closeness to Taariq, and hold no resentful feelings towards him.”
“What would you do if you were me?” she said.
He sat forward, as though a gun had been pointed at his nape. “In what regard, Mother?”
“Would you marry him?”
Mataan’s tongue was active, not in the act of speech but scouring the inside of his mouth as if searching for a clue there. “Knowing you, Mother,” he said at last, “you’ll make up your mind one way or the other on the spur of the moment. So I don’t know what to say.”
Somewhere in the labyrinth of Duniya’s mind there was a cul de sac. She said, “People say that I’m after his money.”
“People say all sorts of wicked things,” he echoed.
“Doesn’t that worry you?”
His lips swelled out in handsome protrusion as he thought about this. He said, “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but what has Bosaaso got that you could be after by way of money, a Green Card or property? I doubt very much if his income is higher than Uncle Abshir’s, who’s prepared to give you all you need, and foot all our educational bills anywhere in the world.”
“All the same, people’s tongues are busy, spreading evil gossip.”
“I wouldn’t worry about them if I were you,” he said. “They say terrible things about the man I borrowed the scooter from. It’s his affair if he is homosexual; what makes his sexual taste their business I don’t know. Some people say unkind things about Waris on account of the age difference between us.” His lips might have been those of an infant who had just been breast-fed, and not sufficiently.
“You love her, don’t you?”
An open mouth is like an open door: one is tempted to look in. Mataan’s had a beautiful set of teeth, with a gap in the centre of the top row. Women never failed to comment on his fanax, wishing it was Nasiiba who had it, for it is commonly believed that girls look prettier when they have gaps in their teeth. Such good-looking features are an asset assuring women of men’s attention and marriage. And Nasiiba would retort: Who wants to marry anyway?
“You don’t have to answer my question,” said Duniya.
This was meant to prod him, considering that he was susceptible to her probings. “I think I’m in love with her, yes,” he said, and he was immediately ill at ease.
“Shall we leave?” she asked.
He stood up, tall, slim and shy. “Are you ready?”
She too got to her feet. She felt uncomfortable in the slacks she had on, her navel bulge an irritation. But she wasn’t going to change into a dress or her uniform which she had stuffed into her bag; wearing either would be inconvenient on a scooter. Mataan was waiting for her by the Vespa, modest as the dull, brown and humble grey colours which he liked.
“Here we are,” he said, kick-starting the machine.