She considers the suggestion, fighting off an encroaching feeling of despondency that is activating her warning signals. For with shocking speed, unbidden, the thought of forever being dependent on someone — to drive her around, to mount checkpoints, to fix the fuse when the electricity fails, to fetch a takeaway — has reasserted itself.
“As long as you don’t hold it against me…”
“Hold what against you?”
“I’ll feed you from what we have in the house.”
And she summons the boys, assigning the job of washing the vegetables to Gacal — to whom she says, “Make sure you wash your hands first…with soap”—and to SilkHair the chore of fetching the live chicken and the sharp knife she remembers using when cooking for Gudcur’s children the second day she was here. SilkHair wants to prove to Gacal that he has balls, and so requests that he be allotted the honor of chopping off the chicken’s head, and that Gacal should then forfeit the right to play the role of an eagle.
Bile says, “Never killed one in my life.”
Gacal accepts the bet, and the two set their camp within view of Cambara and Bile, who start chatting, Bile agreeing that this is better than a takeaway any day. When he asks what Gacal’s story is, having heard SilkHair’s, she tells him the boy’s heart-wrenching story and how she is trying now to reunite mother and son. She adds, “He is a ‘tourist’ in the land of misery in the sense in which you used the word earlier to describe SilkHair’s probable status at The Refuge.”
Then silence as the two boys work, SilkHair encountering no difficulties in swinging the chicken until he and it are both dizzy and then in chopping its head off. He even helps Gacal, who is a novice in the kitchen, to peel the potatoes and deal with the cutting of the onion without crying furiously, after which SilkHair starts to tell a story in which he boasts, rattling off his exploits as a fighter for the clan-based militia. He gives exaggeratedly gory details of what he has done to the enemy combatants, adding that it excites him to dice with danger, show that he is man.
Cambara then asks him to start a fire in the brazier and then fill two pans with water, one for Gacal’s veggies and one for his chicken and to let her know when he has removed the feathers and the bird is ready to cook. She says for Bile’s benefit, “Maybe I have prunes somewhere in one of my bags. A Moroccan chicken dish, the closest to tagine we can have at this place.”
The two boys making very little noise and concentrating on their allocated chores, and Bile serene in her company, the evening appears majestic in its quietness, and she, but a woman who has it in her to take someone’s measure and then do the good thing, even if she is also capable of settling accounts with those, like Zaak and Wardi, who are given to unbecoming behavior. She comes to realize for the first time in a while, that her rages toward Wardi, who at times she seems to have completely forgotten, and her disappointment in Zaak, whom she doesn’t know if she will bother to invite to the private show at Kiin’s, have gone. In their stead is a sense of elation.
Inching his way nearer, careful not to disturb her or interrupt their conversation, SilkHair stands for a few minutes in the periphery of her vision. When she motions to him to speak, he says, “Shall we?”
“Shall we what?”
“Start cooking?” SilkHair says.
She remembers that she hasn’t looked for the prunes. In her travels, she carries prunes on the assumption that they help her digest her food better. That she hasn’t searched for them up to now only means that she wasn’t the cook. Up she stands and in she goes to a couple of rooms before she finds the tote bag in which they might be. Again, luck is on her side, because they are at the bottom. What’s more, she brings out her shortwave radio, hoping to discover if the “Missing Persons” BBC Somali Service program, which airs at about this time, will broadcast her message signed with her pseudonym today.
She is happy she has decided that they eat together as a foursome here, for this has brought out so much fervor in the boys’ wish to participate, and in Bile’s desire to share their company as a threesome.
Back at the brazier, she says, “Let’s!”
The communal cooking runs rather smoothly, and the two boys are in song, each taking their cue from the other’s sterling performance, like the lines allotted to a professional actor at his peak. She derives immense pleasure from watching SilkHair, who is in a league of his own, and Gacal, who is a dab hand, like actors teasing the multiplicity of possible interpretations out of a single phrase. It seems, however, as if SilkHair has been cut from a coarser cloth, a touch too nervous, crude in his manner and seldom able to cotton on to his failing. She has had to remind him to wash his hands with soap and water, because he keeps wiping them on his dirty clothes.
Supper ready, she serves the boys and tells them to give them space. Too eager to be on their own, they take off, each carrying one of the new plates — SilkHair has insisted on opening the box — and tumblers full of water.
“How sweet of you to come,” she says when they are alone, “on the first night that I’ve resolved to pitch camp here. You’ve been of immense help. Thank you.”
He takes his first mouthful. “Good,” he says.
She raises her glass, saying, “Sorry that we do not have anything stronger than water in a tumbler. Let’s eat in celebration of peace.”
An air of certainty prevails, with Bile commending her for motivating SilkHair and Gacal to take their cooking or whatever else they are doing seriously.
“I would like to audition for a part,” he says.
“Would you?”
“Is there a part for an old man?”
“A villager. A wizened old man.”
“Lend me the text?”
Time to listen to the “Missing Persons” program of the BBC Somali Service. It takes her a long while to find the station, and when she does, she discovers that the news is on. They listen to it, both feeling disheartened as they hear a nothing-good-comes-out-of-Africa litany.
Cambara says, “It is a pity the world doesn’t come to hear of the very many excellent things that are accomplished daily in different parts of the continent by ordinary folks, achievements about which no one ever learns.”
“The news, sui generis, is about politicians and their doings, isn’t it?” Bile says. “Not about the ordinary person in the Midwest in the United States; in a small village in Darfur, surviving the daily horrors; a fisherman in Sri Lanka; or a mother raising her children under difficult circumstances in Baghdad.”
Cambara, confirming this and agreeing with the drift, adds that she knows that you can have a good day and a bad day in civil war Mogadiscio as you might in a small farming village anywhere. She goes on, “Before I got here, I used to think that it wouldn’t be possible to enjoy a moment of peace in the company of a friend, with twilight hours as breathtaking as the one on the horizon.”
“You think you may stay here,” he asks. “Long?”
“All being well, I might.”
Just then, “Missing Persons” comes on. Cambara is surprised that some of the people are searching for their cousins or half-brothers after so many years of being out of touch. She can’t imagine her and Arda being apart for three days without one trying to phone or if possible e-mail the other. It is toward the end of the program that she hears Qaali’s name mentioned and her pseudonym, care of Maanta Hotel, telephone number included, given.
“Let’s hope Qaali or someone who knows her is listening to today’s program,” Bile says. “For all one knows, she may be living close by, unaware that her son is here.”