Duniya sat side-saddle. It was the first time she had ridden a motor scooter and it scared her. Mataan had to stop two or three times, to remind her that it was important to co-ordinate their bodily balance, otherwise they might tip over and hurt themselves. “It’s like a boat with an outboard engine,” he said, repeating what the owner had told him. But Duniya had no idea what he was talking about, never having been in such a contraption.
However, she enjoyed the ride once they got going, the wind blowing in her face, her ears filling with air, her head empty of all worrying thoughts, save the new pleasant sensation of being on a scooter and no longer scared. It was like a new-found freedom. She felt light. The roads were lined on both sides by people waiting endlessly for transport which never arrived. In her mind, these people had arrived to wave to the two of them riding past, like a presidential motorcade receiving a tumultuous welcome.
There was something scary about the experience. The sky was out of bounds and the earth appeared either too far below her or else too close to her feet, which hung down, almost touching it. There seemed many more potholes than she remembered encountering when in Bosaaso’s car. On the other hand, they could be spotted well in advance, and be avoided. Duniya’s eyes were active and registered the details of people’s clothes. “I feel wonderful,” Duniya shouted. “It feels wonderful.”
“What?” shouted Mataan.
She repeated what she had said, adding, “We must buy a scooter.” He didn’t show any reaction; maybe he hadn’t heard her suggestion.
Her sides began to ache and her muscles stretched with acute pain from having sat awkwardly, like someone holding back her weight away from another person sharing a limited space. None the less this was decidedly more fun than the humiliation of being in the company of somebody one didn’t know. In another sense she was happy to make the point to Bosaaso that she had alternative ways of getting to work, wasn’t totally reliant on his good-will and kind gestures, thank you.
“Look at them,” Duniya said.
He slowed down and asked, “Look at whom?”
“Look at them dressed in these exquisitely tailored clothes!” and she pointed at the women and men on either side of road, potential passengers of buses that never arrived, thumb-raisers for lifts that were never offered. “I wonder if they’re on their way to a wedding or to a seasonal festivity in their office. How can they care so much about their appearances when they’re penniless?” Her ribs pained from her long shout, her lungs ran out of the breath she could generate. She paused, then after a while continued, “Both as individuals and as governments, we Somalis, better still, we Africans, tend to live beyond our means.”
They rode in silence until they reached the hospital entrance, and she got off, happy that the journey was at an end. Her feet had grown numb, but the rest of her body felt light, as though she had just descended the gangway-ladder of an aircraft. Mataan raised the scooter on its stand and got down to give her her handbag, although his satchel remained slung over the handle-bars.
Barely able to hear her own voice she said, “I want you to change three hundred and fifty US dollars for me, Mataan dear,” and she gave him seven fifty-dollar bills, recalling to her memory all that had taken place the previous few days, including the discovery of the foundling, her meeting with and falling in love with Bosaaso, and the wads of money which she found tucked away in Nasiiba’s Iranian magazine. “We’ll need some cash when we go house-hunting this afternoon, in case a landlord insists on an immediate deposit. Don’t go to Uncle Qaasim if you can help it.”
“But I can’t think of anyone else,” he confessed.
“Ask around,” she suggested. “Good rate, safe person. I’m sure one of your friends will come up with a name. After all, this is good money, what Nasiiba calls ‘Bosaaso-money’ nowadays.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
She walked away, wishing him good day and advising him to take care.
Bosaaso came to fetch her after work, and after exchanging the formula greetings they remained quiet. The images pouring into Duniya’s mind refused to cohere. Maybe it was to do with a nervous bug in the pit of her stomach, a worried reaction to a hasty decision to serve the quit-notice on herself. There was no going back, she would have to move out, find some other place. But where?
Where did one start? The city of Mogadiscio expanded right before her eyes, growing a thousand times in size, although somehow she convinced herself that she should not be easily discouraged. It was a pity that newspapers did not carry notices advertising small flats to rent, only large villas intended for foreign residents of the metropolis, who were willing to pay their Somali landlords in hard currency. For locals, news about the availability of vacant accommodation, like other information, was circulated primarily by word of mouth in this essentially oral society.
Her pride and instinct for self-preservation advised against involving Bosaaso in her search. She did not have her own means of transport and taxis were impossible to find. Besides, he was willing to take her anywhere. Or was this exploitative?
It was when she thought of herself as a woman and thought about the female gender in the general context of “home” that Duniya felt depressed. The landmarks of her journey through life from infancy to adulthood were marked by various “stations,” all of them owned by men, run and dominated by men. Did she not move from her father’s home directly into Zubair’s? Did she not flee Zubair’s right into Shiriye’s? There was a parenthesis of time, a brief period when she was her own mistress and the runner of her station, so to speak, as a free tenant of Taariq’s, only for this to cease when they became husband and wife. Meanwhile, her elder brother Abshir’s omnipresent, benevolent, well-meaning shadow fell on every ramshackle structure she built, pursuing every move she made, informing every step she took: Abshir being another station, another man. Now there was Bosaaso. Morale delta storia? Duniya was homeless, like a great many women the world over. And as a woman she was property-less.
Over lunch, not speaking to anyone, not even Nasiiba (who had prepared today’s meal), nor Yarey (who had attempted to drag her into their conversation), Duniya recalled how often she had postponed looking for her own home, away from her half-brother Shiriye’s, where she and her twins had lived in virtual terror and humiliation. It was thanks to being misdirected by a neighbour (who might have been Marilyn’s grandmother for all she could tell) that she had knocked on the wrong door, Taariq’s. And he had taken pity on a homeless woman, with twins to raise. Would someone take pity on her today, being driven by a man in such a handsome car?
“Why, you look so miserable. Cheer up, Mummy!” Nasiiba said.
Her sadness long as her chin, Duniya replied, “Give me one reason why I should.”
The twins exchanged glances, resting ultimately on Bosaaso. This was lost on no one, save Yarey, who was busy dismantling a Parker pen belonging to Bosaaso, with nobody telling her not to ruin it.
As if setting the theme of a discussion, Duniya said, “The simple fact is that I am a homeless woman, and there is no getting away from it.”
Before long, the group began to talk at length of the notion of homelessness which, according to Bosaaso, had its origin in the myth of the displaced Adam, not Eve. This was challenged by Nasiiba, who argued that in Islam there was no such myth as the fall of man. There was the wandering figure of a migrant, in the Islamic notion of Hijra, which may also be interpreted as an act of a pious Muslim fleeing persecution. In an ideal Islamic society, the mosque is the place where the homeless go.