“Why do you ask?” she says.
Seamus replies, “Dajaal, who left a message on my mobile, says that your family house was attacked last night and there have been casualties.”
Kiin is curious, but Cambara tells her nothing.
Meanwhile Seamus continues, “Dajaal has just completed his mopping up exercise and has taken two seriously wounded militiamen from the attacking side to hospital, mere boys, as young as ten, he reckons.” He pauses, and then he adds, “No one on ‘our’ side has been hurt.”
Cambara says, “I’m on my way to the house, in a truck with armed escort. Please tell him that I am headed his way and would appreciate him getting in touch to keep us informed of how things are.”
“I will have him expect you.”
Seamus rings off. Cambara gives nothing away.
TWENTY-NINE
Cambara sits up front, next to the driver, half of her arm out of the window, her abject expression suggesting to those who know what she is doing that she is in all probability suffering from a belated loss of nerve.
Asked to explain why she is wearing a rueful mien, which is rather uncharacteristic of her, she might answer that she is not worried for her own life. What galls her is that she is not conducting her life alone, which is the noble thing to do. She is carrying out her elaborate plans in a cowardly way, driving headlong into a danger zone and taking along with her half a dozen youths and the deputy head and the security chief of the hotel, none of whom has anything to gain from this venture, her adventure. In addition to these, there are tagalongs Gacal and SilkHair, who mysteriously turned up as the driver put the truck in first gear and who jumped in with no idea where they were headed. Now they are two rows behind Cambara’s, gabbing. She hopes that her reckless decision to move into the family home will not prove to be calamitous for anyone other than herself, because she will never forgive herself if someone else is hurt. Why isn’t she worried on her own account? Because she’s the one who left the comforts of Toronto and come to strife-torn Mogadiscio, and look where she has finished up? Eased her way into regaining the family property — not too bad for a mourning mother.
Her mobile phone rings, the suddenness of its tintinnabulation startling her and ending her private meanderings. Dajaal says, “Put your security detail on.”
She spins around in alarm, behaving as if a hostage crisis is unfolding. She searches for guidance from the head of the hotel security. She passes the phone over to him, in the second row, and explains that it is Dajaal needing to speak to him.
“Pronto?” Hudhudle, the security chief, says and listens.
Under normal circumstances, she might be tempted to inquire why Dajaal’s manners have gone walkabout, but she doesn’t, mindful of the fact that she has already burned the candle at both ends, alienating Zaak first and now possibly Kiin by moving out when she has. She won’t quibble over Dajaal’s manners if he doesn’t have the time to waste on the routine formalities of “Please” or “May I.” She has added to the unusualness of the present situation by upping the risk by several notches. Moreover, his voice has sounded unstrung. Why hasn’t he spoken to her and requested that she relay his message to the security detail? Is he very upset and doesn’t wish to imperil their rapport, lest he say the wrong thing? If she didn’t know him better, she might think that he considers her to be redundant because of her gender, given that war, which is men’s, not women’s, affair, can only be discussed with another man.
As she listens to the security man repeating some words after Dajaal, she acts as though unbothered, and pretends as if what is going on is of no concern to her and has little or nothing to do with her or her life. What instructions can Dajaal be giving that require Hudhudle continuously interspersing his responses deferentially either with “sir,” or with similar phrases?
Cambara remembers a long time ago when there was peace in this country, when everyone knew their place in it and their responsibility for maintaining it. In the order and nature of things, you heard these forms of address, because Somali society was at peace with its collective conscience, comfortable in itself and proud of its station, perceived as being unique in Africa and the world at large. It’s curious that she hasn’t given much thought to any of this before now or hasn’t associated these terms with an orderly way of living since moving into the hotel. Of course, it isn’t that she has a wistful desire to return to a hierarchical, male-run taxonomy in which women occupied the lowest rung in the ladder. God forbid, no. It is just that she is nostalgic for a past in which your house was yours and you did not involve armed escorts to get it back or to get to it in the first place, and to live and sleep in it without having to park a battlewagon in several of its access points just to protect it.
“Here,” she hears Hudhudle say, handing her mobile phone back to her but not before writing down a number on a piece of paper and then saving it on his handheld phone. Hudhudle will use the number in case of an emergency, she reckons, or in the event that it becomes necessary to get in touch with Dajaal.
She takes her phone back, mumbling, “Thanks,” and stares at the equipment, maybe hoping that it will divulge to her the intelligence to which only Hudhudle is privy. She is aware that the information it has transmitted to Hudhudle may inalterably affect her life and the lives of the others in the truck if a battle were to erupt. If she hesitates to inquire what is going on, it is because she does not want him to speak to her in the belittling tone of voice adults employ with children; men with women; locals with foreigners to tell their addressee that there are certain life-and-death details with which she does not bother them. She keeps her counsel, remaining silent and deciding to let someone else do the asking. Strangely no one does, maybe because his men know that he will not oblige; and Gacal and SilkHair are blathering and setting each other challenges.
As the truck tumbrels in its forward motion — you would think its main aim is to rid itself of its passengers — the sinews of her face taut and stretched fully, Cambara journeys, in thought, back to her childhood, when her parents created a protective ring around her, keeping her deliberately underinformed “for her own good.” She remembers traveling to Kismayo and then to Nairobi with her mother in her seventh year; mother and daughter were gone for over two months. Then something incredible occurred: She overheard Arda telling another woman neighbor, a day after their return, that she had taken her daughter, Cambara, to be infibulated. At first, Cambara asked herself why Arda was telling the brazen lie; she wanted to know what makes a respectable person, like her mother, resort to lying. Older and wiser, she would formulate it thus: What manner of society compels people to resort to taking refuge in falsehoods, disguising the nature of their drink in mugs, and investing in a myth of their own manufacture on the strength of which they murder their neighbors?
Cambara became a willing fellow liar when she repeated the same lies whenever any of her peers from the neighborhood or at school underwent the ritual of female infibulation, saying that her mother had hired a woman in Kismayo to perform it. The first time, Cambara lied out of loyalty to her mother; it was easier the second time, and she thought nothing of it; then she got used to telling the untruth until she almost believed it. She stuck to the false version, because she did not want her mates to tease her, describe her as uncircumcised, as impure. And of course, she did not want them to call her a liar. In the end, she made her mother’s initial lie her own. And Cambara discovered over the years that she and her mother would repeatedly resort to deceiving to keep the fetishists of infibulations at bay; or to make it possible for Zaak to join her as her spouse, lies feeding lies. Not telling the truth becomes second nature to anyone who operates in oppressive societies; it is a way of avoiding a confrontation with the members of a society notorious for its hypocrisy.