With a snap, her eyes shut and opened, so that a momentary darkness was followed immediately by one full of bright sunshine. She was exhausted. Then Qaasim’s turning up when Fariida had only just arrived rather complicated matters. The two of them had called at the city flat, which had looked impressively cosy and welcoming. She hoped Abshir would like it.
Now the airport tower came into view, and Bosaaso asked, “How many of us are coming to dinner, then?”
“I have counted seven,” she said.
“Seven is an ominous number that brings good fortune.”
Then he manoeuvred his way through the narrow entrance to the parking lot. He searched for a place where they could park all three cars side by side. He had just found such a place, when he saw the plane come in to land.
In half an hour, Abshir, her beloved brother, was coming off the plane, the first passenger to do so. Duniya’s blood pounded in her ears, thinking not only of Abshir, but also asking herself to whom she would first give the news that she had decided to marry Bosaaso: the bridegroom himself or her brother, a piece of good news with which to welcome him.
Like a chick breaking out of its shock of an outer shell; like an infant’s eyes able to see for the first time; like a moth opening its baby wings to fly; like shapes that come, go and return, human forms that have voices, that answer to names if you recall what to call them, human forms that speak one’s name “Duniya.” She remembered that some time in the past, she had felt light like the mythical night journey in the Koran and had flown away; remembered falling asleep some time in the past, and when she had awoken, the foundling had died. Duniya now wondered to herself if she were hallucinating, she was sure she had lost touch with the physical reality surrounding her, and sensed delirium engulfing her, making her feel giddy, the way labour pains desensitize a woman so she cannot feel the pain because there is too much of it.
She was a traveller who had just arrived and was suffering from physical exhaustion. She couldn’t trust her feet to carry her anywhere, and her ears were filled with compressed air, and her head was entertaining a thousand and one thoughts which had to wait until the right moment came. She was an uncle meeting his nieces and nephews in person for the first time; she was a brother meeting his sister Duniya after so many years; she was a man encountering his brother-in-law-elect, someone whom he had known before, in another context; she was a man meeting two good-looking teenagers. But then there you are, maybe you are hallucinating!
Duniya’s memory, she would be the first to admit, was fragmentary and full of hiatuses, like a photographer who, while the group of which she was a member posed in front of a camera, adjusted the timing wrongly, giving herself insufficient time before taking her own place in the group portrait.
There is nothing like heightened consciousness to make one’s centre shift. Duniya would explain to Bosaaso later that evening that she had suffered from some form of psychic disturbance, of the kind likely to demonstrate itself when one’s brain cells receive a greater amount of impressions than they can cope with. She didn’t know how else to describe what she had felt.
In spite of all this, everything had gone well. Qaasim had been most helpful in arranging for Abshir to walk through the VIP corridor, and not have to open any of his seven bags for customs. Those present each gave a hand in carrying the bags to the waiting cars. Duniya didn’t know much of what happened, not until they got home. By then, all the others had gone, only family remained, and Bosaaso had been accepted as a bona fide member of it.
In her head, Duniya had many unanswered and unasked queries. For instance: How had she introduced Bosaaso? As Abshir’s brother-in-law-elect? Or just a friend? She was sure Abshir could see that her relationship with Bosaaso deserved to be properly introduced. But did she make a mess of it all? And with whom had Fariida gone? With Qaasim, in his car?
Once Duniya came to, the universe of her imagination was at her beck and call. She could now see Abshir properly, hear his deep voice, remember all his kind gestures, his unlimited generosity. It remained to her a mystery why she always accepted Abshir’s gifts, whereas she felt ill at ease receiving other people’s.
Abshir was a tall man, with a stoop, whose posture made him appear well over six foot. He was very dark with long limbs, a wide mouth and thick lips. For a man his age, he had a lot of hair, although a few grey hairs showed through. His hands were large, his fingers long. His eyes, when listening, shone with eager expectation. Abshir was a heavy smoker, a cigarette every quarter of an hour, and he had a dry cough. Abshir loved chewing raw garlic, a habit he shared with Nasiiba, and he and his niece were of a similar temperament, although Mataan resembled him more closely.
He had a gentle laugh, very soft, hardly audible. Now he was laughing because someone had told him he had been spared the bouquet-giving ceremony of a niece in white, with a bunch of famished roses.
Having seen the Vespa Mataan had borrowed from Waris’s cousin, Abshir offered to buy his nephew a motor scooter if he did well in his exam. When told that Duniya and the children would no longer be living in Qaasim’s flat, but in another in the city centre, Abshir asked if it was possible for him to buy a pied-a-terre, for which Duniya would be responsible, or live in. No wonder they had nicknamed him “Scelaro,” He was fast.
He, Bosaaso and Mataan were sitting in the courtyard, chatting. The two older men had many friends in common, and each was inquiring of the other about them. Mataan listened attentively, his mouth gaping open, looking admiringly from one to the other. Bosaaso was thrilled to talk about the good times he and Abshir had enjoyed in Rome. How were Abshir’s Italian wife and two daughters? Were they still living in Trastevere or had they moved? What about Bosaaso’s Australian and South African friends, were they still there, working for the FAO?
“How’s Mire?” Abshir asked.
Bosaaso gave Abshir such a quick run-down of what Mire was doing that Mataan wondered if there wasn’t more to what Bosaaso and Mire were up to, coming all the way as they had done from Germany and the USA respectively, and donating their services to their country.
“I would love to see Mire,” said Abshir.
“He’s coming to dinner tonight,” said Bosaaso.
Abshir turned to Mataan, “Where are we having dinner tonight, Mataan?”
“Maybe Mother has organized something, but I don’t know.”
“Duniya is inviting us out tonight,” Bosaaso declared.
“Where?” Abshir’s eyes lit up eagerly.
After a pause, Bosaaso said, “Croce del Sud.”
Duniya joined them and stood silently in the parenthesis her arrival opened. Abshir took a loving look at her, then, as his sister sat down beside him, said to Bosaaso, “Is Croce still open?”
“It is,” said Bosaaso. “It has become a bit seedy, but some of the waiters are still there from the days before independence, and they still bow at the appearance of a white-face, because white hands offer better tips than dark ones. But you get excellent service if your dark hand offers a fifteen per cent tip, five per cent higher than the pink hand.”
Reminiscing, Abshir turned to Mataan and Duniya. “You know, we weren’t allowed to go anywhere near Croce del Sud in the fifties, when the Italians were the master race here. Nor were the waiters allowed to wear shoes.”
Duniya felt foolish interrupting the flow of the conversation with a question, but asked, “Why do Italians believe they are the ones who taught Somalis to wear shoes, as if the whole venture of their so-called higher civilization comprised a gimmicky habit of a pair of feet-covering objects, Abshir?”