Duniya’s heart wasn’t in the story-telling any more but she knew Nasiiba wouldn’t leave her in peace. So she said, “Someone in the neighbourhood, an elderly woman, misdirected me.” She sounded bored and tired.
“I don’t follow you.” Nasiiba was plagued by a desire to be told more.
“Until Taariq saw me and I asked if he had a room to let, the thought of renting it hadn’t crossed his mind. But when I insisted that a neighbour had mentioned he had a place going, he looked puzzled at first, and to a certain extent offended. The misunderstanding was cleared up soon enough, however, and I turned to leave. Then he changed his mind.”
“Why?”
“I’ve never inquired.”
“Maybe you were destined to become husband and wife.”
Duniya let her thoughts wander a little..
“Go on,” Nasiiba said.
“It seemed to me that he reasoned that he and I were kindred spirits; I could see it, and he could too. Anyway. After his instant decision to rent the room, he asked when I could move in? I mentioned the existence of children, just in case, I had seen lots of landlords who didn’t want a single woman with children. He asked the sex and ages of my children and I told him. Twins were a blessing, his voice beamed with rejoicing: ‘Bring them.’ ”
“You moved in the same day?”
“We did. We brought everything we owned, a mattress, a few burnt pots I’d been given second-hand and all our clothes in a single tea-chest. He lent us a bed, then introduced me to the owner and keeper of the local general store, who consented to open a credit account, bills to be settled at the end of the month. And I never looked back from then on.”
“You got on well, Taariq and you, didn’t you?”
“Except for the one huge fight, the one before the final splitting up, we seldom quarreled in the years we lived first as tenant and landlord, then as husband and wife,” said Duniya.
“It’s good that you’ve remained friends,” said Nasiiba, “because such friendships are rare after a divorce, especially when children are involved.”
“That’s right,” Duniya agreed.
“He still loves you; he told me that today,” Nasiiba said.
Duniya had barely time to react when she noticed that Nasiiba had got up to put on jeans and a T-shirt with the Band Aid logo printed across its front. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“I won’t be long,” said Nasiiba, consulting her watch.
“It’s after nine o’clock,” said Duniya, as though mentioning the time might deter her daughter.
“ I won’t be long.”
“It’s late,” Duniya said, helplessly.
“I said, I won’t be long.”
Duniya had the power to stop her, but what was the point? Traditionalists would describe Duniya’s offspring as hooyo-koris, children growing up in a household with a woman as head.
Going out Nasiiba shouted, “I love you, Mummy,” clearly emulating American girls whom she had seen in films. There was no doubt in Duniya’s mind that her children loved her.
NEW YORK (REUTER)
Millions of people in the developing world have starved to death as a result of the policies of Western creditor nations, a United Nations Development Programme spokesman said. In a gloomy annual assessment, the spokesman argued that the finely woven eco nomic tapestry could be unravelled at any time, causing calamitous suffering in the Third World. It was unfair, he added, that poor countries have been made to depend totally on what happens not in their own economies but in those of richer, more economically developed countries, whose debts they are unable to service, let alone repay.
4
In which Duniya remembers how her dying father promised her hand in marriage to his friend and peer.
A high-pitched whistle was what Duniya heard. She looked around. Beds. Window-ledges. Door-sills. Sure enough, she spotted it: a frightened half-collared kingfisher with cinnamon breast, dark blue patch on either side of its neck, bill shining black in the electric brightness. The bird perched on an arm of the ceiling-fan. Another shrill whistle, then out through the window by which it had entered.
Power was abruptly off and Duniya was in the dark.
Her memory of her first husband Zubair, father of her twins Nasiiba and Mataan, dated back to a day when she was four years old. Abshir, her full-brother, had recently won a place in the country’s most prestigious secondary school in Mogadiscio and to celebrate took his beloved younger sister to Galkacyo shopping-centre to buy her a present by which to remember the occasion. Unable to find anything she fancied, he promised to send something special from Mogadiscio. But he bought her an ice-cream, a newly introduced luxury.
While passing the house of Zubair, a friend and neighbour of their father for many years, she and Abshir noticed a handsome horse in the old man’s barn. An in-law of Zubair’s had presented the Arab stallion as part of the bride-wealth for the young woman he wed. Zubair overheard Abshir’s remark to Duniya that he’d do anything to be allowed to ride this most beautiful horse he had ever set eyes on.
Abshir, a timid eighteen-year-old, was embarrassed, stammering, “It’s Dunya who wanted to ride the horse, not me,” pronouncing his sister’s name gently as he often did, without an i after the n. “I wanted to look, that’s all. I knew you wouldn’t mind.” Then Abshir held his only sister’s hand encouragingly “Take a look at the horse, this is probably the only time you’ll see him,” he said.
“Can I touch him?” she asked. For a moment Abshir wasn’t sure whether she meant Zubair or the horse. She repeated her request: “Please let me touch him.”
Zubair turned his unsighted head with the slowness of a lighthouse beam. “Would you like to ride this beautiful horse, Duniya?” he asked.
“If I say yes, will you give him to me for keeps, Uncle Zubair?”
“Sure. Just ask your brother to receive the horse on your behalf.”
“He’s teasing you,” Abshir said. “No one would give away such a handsome horse to a baby girl your age.” His tone was decidedly envious. “But you may touch him.”
Speechless with excitement, Duniya nodded vigorously.
“Come and touch him,” encouraged Abshir. “Don’t be afraid.” And he lifted her off the ground, something which she resisted at first because she was now frightened.
Touching him, Duniya said, “Uncle Zubair gave him to me. Tell Abshir the horse is mine, Uncle.”
“He is yours,” confirmed the blind old man, who had been lavishing unrequited love on the good-looking beast.
“He’s teasing you,” Abshir insisted.
With childish insistence she said, “The horse is mine.”
“Mind the ice,” Abshir admonished, “and behave yourself.”
Upset, she let the ice-cream drop to the ground in a moment of uncontrollable rage. “Never mind,” Abshir said placatingly, “I’ll get you another, but be careful, don’t dirty your dress.”
“I don’t want an ice,” she said angrily. “I want my horse.”
Zubair pointed with his walking-stick in the direction of where the horse’s tackle was kept. “Take him for a ride, Abshir, will you?” And as Abshir bent down to pick up the saddle and bridle, to bring them over, he asked, “Have you ever ridden a horse, Abshir?”
“Never a horse like this king here,” said Abshir.
“I am sure you will be all right,” Zubair reassured him.
“I want to ride him too,” pleaded Duniya.
“Only if you behave yourself,” her brother said.