“Surely, you didn’t grow up in a setting where space in the home is divided up into living, sleeping, eating and cooking spaces? So how can you think of a kitchen as a mausoleum?”
After a long while he said, “I would agree with you that men have assigned to themselves all the sacred, powerful spaces, forbidding women from being visible or present in such places as mosques or at meetings of a council of men reaching decisions which affect the whole community, including women.”
Duniya, agreeing, nodded her head.
“I also agree with you,” he said, following a thoughtful pause, “that the spaces allotted to women belong to the grey areas of beds, food and the rearing of children.”
Then the bell in the kitchen rang, just when they resumed eating their breakfast in reflective quietness. Bosaaso started. When it rang for the second time, he looked at Duniya for guidance. And when it rang for the third time, he looked up at the bell as if it were a video contraption that would show him on a ten-millimetre screen who wanted to enter.
There was anger in his eyes. But Duniya hoped he could decide whether to answer the bell or no without involving her in his affairs. Who could tell who it might be? Waaberi? Mire? Kaahin? One of Bosaaso’s numerous cousins? Or Nasiiba with an urgent message to surprise Duniya?
His mouth was twisted in a grimace.
“I hope that’s Waaberi,” he said, in the tone of a man itching for a fight.
They waited for the fourth ring of the bell.
“Did you hear people calling out your name last night?” she asked.
“I’m a heavy sleeper,” he reminded her.
The bell rang for the fourth time. He got up, a man quick to test his own strength against anyone. Leaving in haste, he dropped his napkin on the floor and Duniya bent down to pick it up.
She returned to her omelette and tea, in the quiet comfortable thought that she hadn’t pressed him either way. His life was his business and he could do what he pleased with it.
She heard the outside gate creak open and then heard it shut, admitting a woman whose thin voice was explaining to Bosaaso that she had come several times before, but had not found him in. “Where have you been all this time? I even went to that woman’s place this mornings, looking for you,” she said.
Bosaaso, voice neutral, said, “Why don’t you come inside?”
I am “that woman,” thought Duniya, smiling.
Bosaaso preceded Waaberi into the kitchen. Duniya sized the woman up as she came in: small, large-mouthed and large-hipped, heavily made up and wearing lipstick, hair singed, dress expensive and belonging to the season’s fashion, with a zip in front, and showing enough of her enormous breasts, like a film preview, dark birthmark in the valley and all, bare arms, a bushy armpit, a belt with a pendant, a necklace of amber beads and bracelets for her wrists and anklets as well. Waaberi was so engrossed with thoughts about Bosaaso that she didn’t see Duniya who might have been part of the kitchen’s furniture. Then, pointing to Duniya, he said, “You know each other, don’t you?”
Not a sound from Waaberi. Only eyes filled with contempt. When next she had an interpretable expression, Duniya thought she might be considering the possibility of turning back whence she had come. But she struggled like a huntswoman caught in the trap she had set.
He offered her a seat, but Waaberi wouldn’t take it. “Would you like to have breakfast with us?” he asked.
“No, thank you,” she said with a touch of nervousness.
Majestically calm, Bosaaso had his hands resting on his hips like a PE instructor watching his trainees rehearse a sequence of exercises, an instructor pleased with the results. “If you’re not sitting down with us and you don’t want to have a cup of tea or a glass of water, is there anything we can do for you?” he said to Waaberi.
Speaking with difficulty, she said, “I’ve come to see you, yes.”
“Why have you come to see me?” And he looked at Duniya, to see what her reaction to the goings-on might be. Hand under chin. None. “I haven’t much time. So speak up please,” he said.
Waaberi almost whispered, “May I speak to you privately?”
“No, you may not.”
“It won’t take more than a minute,” she promised.
“I haven’t a minute to spare. Besides Duniya is no stranger, and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t discuss in front of her.”
Duniya thought Bosaaso might have been a drama student showing to his teacher what he could do.
Waaberi said, “My mother has been unwell.”
“Yes?” said Bosaaso and waited.
“And we’ve just received our electricity, water and other bills, all together.”
“Why bring the bills to me? Or inform me that your mother has been unwell?”
“Because you used to give us a hand in settling some of the bills.”
“Did I only give you a hand or did I settle them all, every cent of your bills?”
Waaberi looked at Duniya for the first time. Then to Bosaaso: “You used to settle them all I am sorry,” and her head bowed, of its own accord. “You’ve always been generous.”
“Do you recall my words when I last called on your mother,” he said, “three days ago, as recently as that?”
She spoke after a pause and with difficulty. “You described yourself as an exploited man, who was being socially blackmailed into giving what he didn’t wish to give any more; you asked us to stop presenting you with our bills.”
“What else did I ask of you? You in particular?”.
She looked too embarrassed to continue. “Go on,” Bosaaso urged her.
“You inquired about how much my jewellery cost, how much the dress and shoes I had on cost, and all my other expensive habits, reminding us that although you worked hard for your money, you couldn’t afford the clothes I wore, and even if you could, you wouldn’t buy them, but would use what you had wisely, care less about external appearances, and not beg.”
“What else did I suggest?” he said.
“That I sell the jewellery to pay the bills.”
“Now whose were they in the first place?”
“Yussur’s.”
“Who was?”
“Your former wife.”
“Did she give them to you, all of the pieces?”
“I borrowed some, and she gave me some.”
“And for how long have I been supporting you and your mother and your expensive tastes after Yussur’s death?”
“One and a half years.”
As though he were counsel for the prosecution rounding up his cross-examination, “Could you remind me when this conversation took place, Waaberi? Do you remember?”
“Three days ago.”
Duniya sensed that she almost added “Sir” to her last response.
Bosaaso sat down. He might have been a jubilant barrister celebrating the end of a successful but difficult case. Anyone might have thought him incapable of such a cruel confrontation.
There was silence. Waaberi looked at Duniya. Was Waaberi appealing to her to intervene? It seemed as if they had been joined by a fourth person. Tension was the fourth person in the kitchen, omnipresent, allowing no one to sit still. This wasn’t a story of equals having a show-down, thought Duniya; not a Duniya confronting the cruelty of a half-brother; or a Yussur having an all-out fight with her mother. This was more like a donor European or American government having a “frank talk” (the all-purpose phrase which would appear in the official communique) with an African country’s representatives, in which the latter were told that they were being immodest in the number of Mercedes and similar extravagances and in the show-pieces they displayed to the rest of the world.