He followed the rhythmic dictates of her orchestrated movements, concentrating on the dents on her body, which were like those on stone steps leading to a frequently used door. Her body felt a lot younger than his own, and was undeniably more athletic. For instance, she could sit in a half crouching position for as long as love-making demanded, whereas his back ached.
Loving him was divine. That was clear.
They altered positions. He was on top now, but still thinking, engaging in mental activity because he didn’t want to come until much, much later.
“Where are you?” she teased.
He hesitated, not getting her meaning. They were still in the dark, and they were seeing each other’s body not by feel alone but by the moon shining in as well. He said, “I am in tenth heaven.”
“Where the jinns are?” she asked.
“Eaves-dropping.”
“Then I am the shooting-star. Watch me come, hold me.”
He held on to her as she flew away, by-passing all known and unknown planets of the celestial system of joy, light as that proverbial prophet’s chariot, the prophet whom some call Ilyaas, some Elijah, some Idris, and whom others describe as descending from Haruun, the brother of Moses; this most revered miracle-maker of a prophet, whom Muslims believe to be Khadr.
“Shall we?” she was saying.
And her body opened wider, and there were many more palaces in it, and Bosaaso realized he owned more keys than had been revealed to him. They swapped positions, but without disengaging, locked to each other by the act of their union. He was enjoying himself. That much was obvious to her.
It was her turn to entertain the thoughts visiting her: she thought of bodies, as he took over the responsibility of conducting the orchestra of their love-making. She felt the marks his trouser belt had left round his waist, body marks that were as prominent as a woman’s stretch marks following the delivery of a number of children. He had far too many bums and scars, even for a Somali. Had his mother cauterized every inexplicable complaint, thinking only that curative surgery made any sense?
She went on thinking that the athletics of love is a great sport, if both parties are, keen on prolonging it, and are content to live wholly in the present, in the very moment in which everything is taking place. Then love is divine.
She felt embarrassed, because she had been thinking about sin at the very moment he spoke the words “I love you.” Love is too pedestrian a notion to associate with Allah; he may be merciful, compassionate; human deeds may be worthy of his rage; but he doesn’t love.
“You know what I am going to do after I’ve sold it?”
She grinned. “But why sell it in the first place?”
“Listen to me, please.”
“Can we go to sleep?” she said. “Tomorrow is a long day: Abshir is coming and we have to go to the flat to prepare it for his arrival.”
“I’m too stirred up to fall asleep.”
He looked miserable. It would do no good to tell him to cheer up. He was as highly strung as her, but she had the self-control to contain her tension. She was a woman who knew how to accommodate all life’s contradictions without going insane. “Come,” she said. “Come and lie beside me.”
She stretched out her arm so he could use it as a pillow. She smiled, a smile belt-thin. She listened to him calling her name again and again as though it were the morning’s sacred devotions. “Tell me about Zawadi,” she said.
“What would you like to know?”
“What she’s like.”
“She’s a lovely person.”
“I didn’t think you would have much to do with anyone who wasn’t good at heart,” she said. “Give me a physical description of her.”
“Do you want me to show you photographs of her?” he asked.
She motioned to him to lie where he had lain before. “I don’t trust cameras as much as I trust your emotive description of her. After all, a person is not only a body, which is what photographs show.”
“That’s true,” he agreed.
She encouraged him. “How would you describe her to someone who has never met her?”
“It’s her eyes,” he said, speaking as if under hypnosis.
“What about them?”
“They are almost green.”
“Almost?”
“Like a ginger cat’s, each of Zawadi’s eyes has a slightly different tint, the left a darker green, the right one almost blue. But you have to get close enough to them to notice.”
“And neither eye is artificial?”
“No.”
“What’re her parents’ nationalities?” she asked.
“Both her parents were Afro-American.”
“But somewhere along the line, in her genes, perhaps, there is an explanation,” she said, feeling he was about to doze off. “In a place like the US, where almost everybody comes from somewhere else, there’s bound to be an explanation.”
His eyes were closed, his breathing even like a sleeper’s.
“Would her photographs, the ones you wanted me to see, have shown these differences in the colouring of her eyes?”
There was no answer. He was asleep.
“What do you reckon her reaction will be if she hears you and I are married? Do you think that will upset her? I mean, is she the kind of person who’s likely to send us a telegram of congratulations even if she were?”
When there was no reply, she disengaged her body from his. Then something snapped in her head, like a blind snapping open in a room in which dawn, like an egg, broke bright and light-hearted.
She was sad he wasn’t awake to hear the decision she had reached.
17
In which Duniya wakes up in Bosaaso’s house. Later Waaberi, his late wife’s younger sister, calls; so do Hibo and Kaahin.
A young woman intimate enough with Duniya speaks in the dream of untapped wealth to be found at the bottom of a narrow-mouthed well. Would Duniya like to jump in and appropriate it? She thinks for a long while, eventually giving in, plunging head first, brave, adventurous, untouched by fear of death or drowning. Awaiting her, Duniya finds a well-groomed orchard and at its centre a spring.
Somewhere in the house a radio was giving the morning news bulletin, in English. A raft of strange sounds reached Duniya’s drowsy sense, in weird sequences. Some of the noises were coming from the kitchen where she assumed Bosaaso was preparing breakfast; some came from the eaves, others from within her own head. She was too exhausted to determine what mysterious waves had washed her ashore, depositing her on such an alien beach. Before taking stock of the externals surrounding her, she listened to the 7 o’clock news:
It has been announced at a press conference that the US government is donating to Somalia 30 million dollars’ worth of aid for three programmes. The first is under the heading The Northwestern Region Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Programme and to this the sum of $12 million has been allocated; the second (to which about $5.5 million has been allocated) is to help ameliorate the overall condition of people from the region which has suffered a civil war; while the third programme comprises reconstruction of all the infrastructure that the war in the area has destroyed.
Thinking: this was no civil war, there was a massacre in the Northern Region of innocent civilians, a will-o’-the-wisp drone deafened Duniya with the suddenness of a shock It was not so much a din of noises, more the loudness of ugly colours. The colours of the curtains in the room in which she woke, in which she and Bosaaso had made love, clashed with its wall, those of the walls with the ceiling, and the ceiling’s with the doors and window Perhaps it was unfair to pass judgement on other people’s taste. In any case, which of the two was responsible: Bosaaso or Yussur? Upon whom would she lay the full blame? And what were the reasons for making these choices? Being of a generous turn of mind, she decided that maybe a number of people’s tastes had been accommodated here. But how could he wake in a room like this every morning? The curtain material had a plastic look and feel; the wallpaper was fresh green, bright yellow, flowery, showy. Was it because Bosaaso was a man and so had the enormous capacity to postpone dealing with a domestic problem until some woman came in to tackle it?