Buckets of emotion spill over, with tears of joy coursing down many a throat, Cambara blinking away the wet overflow, Raxma flashing a radient one, Kiin expressing her feelings with repeated hugs. Bile stands with the awkwardness of an amateur actor who does not know how or when to accept applause. Cambara, Kiin, and Raxma stand in a semicircle as if posing for a photograph. Sadly, because no one has remembered to bring a camera, the moment passes unrecorded.
Cambara says to Raxma, “Why are you in this most dangerous of cities?”
Neither the tone nor the phrasing is lost on Raxma, who remembers using these very words when the two friends met in Toronto and Cambara hinted at her wish to come to Mogadiscio and Raxma did everything she could to dissuade her.
Raxma is adept at taming her emotions with a momentary respite, an interlude in which she takes a good hold of herself. She says, “I am here for the world premiere of your play, come to support you and later to boast that I’ve seen it in the city that I still consider to be one of the most dangerous cities in the universe.”
“Is Arda here?” Cambara asks.
From the way Raxma affects an air of surprise, Cambara suspects that her mother is already here and sleeping her jet lag off or is coming within the day. She knows that jet lag plays havoc with Arda’s constitution.
“I haven’t seen your mother in this blessed city, and have no idea where she is,” Raxma says. “Do you know something we don’t?” And she consults Kiin. “Kiin, are you hiding Arda?”
Kiin says, “I can confirm that I have never met the lady.”
In the palpitations of her disquiet, like a pony racing to catch up with the afternoon shadow it has cast, assuming it to be its competitor’s, Cambara tempers her impulses, training them on a faux pas. How can she forget to present Bile? The poor man is standing close by, bashfully looking from one of them to the other.
“Just a moment,” Cambara says. “Here is my mainstay, apart from Kiin, my prop, my protector and guide. Here are Gacal and SilkHair, actors, rogues manqué, if you will. Aren’t they cute, Raaxo dear? And here is Qaali. You know all about her, your input having been instrumental in contacting her, and we all thank you, dear Raaxo.”
“A woman with the world at her feet,” Raxma says.
“We’ll have plenty of time to talk.”
“We will, we will indeed.”
Raxma and Cambara take their seats among the volunteers, and Bile, Gacal, and SilkHair take their respective positions onstage. After ScriptWoman prompts Qaali, giving her her cue, and the others resume reciting their roles, Cambara thinks that the downside of having the world at your feet is that you stand to lose everything if there is a giant earthquake.
With Qaali on her turn, Gacal is agog at first, worried perhaps that his mother may not make the required mark. What will SilkHair say to his mates if she fails to impress everyone? But she doesn’t disappoint him, because she does a fairly good rendering of what she reads, going about it gently and sensitively, even if she hasn’t had a lot of time to read the whole text thoroughly, much less study it with the care it deserves.
When it becomes obvious after repeated readings and several takes that Qaali is tired, and at times her voice breaks off like a dry stick from its parent tree, Cambara calls for a pause.
She says, “We resume in three hours, if that.”
They separate into twos and threes, Raxma and Bile, finding a quiet dogleg away from the noises of ScriptWoman, TeaWoman, and the other volunteers. Cambara and Qaali spot their corner, where the boys serve them tea and let them be. Kiin is with her daughters, the older one volunteering as an assistant to ScriptWoman, the younger to TeaWoman.
Cambara, for Qaali’s benefit, gives a summary of the story line of the play and, convinced that Qaali is a highly educated woman, decides to spare her an interpretative run-through.
Then the hall echoes with Bile’s voice, calling Cambara and Qaali by name and announcing loudly, “It is time to begin again.”
They come from different directions, all five of them, to converge onstage, where they stand around expectantly waiting for something to happen, most likely for ScriptWoman to prompt Qaali, when Zaak, in his all-white Friday best, awaddle with an unhealthy aspect, his face meaty, armpits wet with sweat, forehead oily with fatty perspiration, his breathing heavy, insinuates his presence into Cambara’s vision, shockingly dominating it. Held captive by the memory of the horrors he inflicted on her over the years she spent with him, never mind the nature of their relationship, and harried into a difficult fork in the road they journeyed together, including or rather ending with their fractious encounter the last time — and the only time he has ever been her host — she is undecided as to how to react or what to do. It ill-behooves her to be uncivil in the presence of two of her intimates, namely Raxma and Bile, not to mention so many strangers. Uncomfortable with his lack of bodily controls, he is duck-walking closer, wobblingly weak-kneed. She tells herself that it is not by chance but rather by choice that she has avoided him, not seeing or calling him. Then she hears the sound of approaching feet to her left, and before she has had the time or the opportunity to turn, Raxma is whispering in her ears. “Leave him to me.”
Cambara says nothing; she stiffens. Bile, who knows of Zaak only vaguely, looks from Raxma, who is going past him, to Cambara, who is in a provoked disposition, and eventually toward the others, some of whom seem amused, some bewildered as they watch what is happening.
“Look who is here, Zaak himself,” Raxma says aloud.
Zaak rolls to a halt and, his shirt sticking both to his back and front because of the ungodly dampness, maneuvers the upper part of his body and ultimately its lower part and his head with the slowness of a turtle taking a sharp bend in the road. Then he toddles forward, and Raxma, having stridden toward him, waits, with everyone watching. Cambara senses ripples of babble eddying forth, and, joining rivulets of whispers; these streams course down toward a tributary of popular disapproval.
Raxma says, “How’re you doing, Zaak,” her hand extended in the stiff manner of a warlord shaking hands with another in a photo opportunity imposed by the donor countries giving their starving nation food aid.
“Arda called me,” he says as they shake hands.
“To say?”
“That I can find Cambara here.”
“I am here too,” Raxma replies.
“She said you’d be here.”
There is a prominent tremor in his voice.
“Aren’t you going to welcome me?”
“Welcome.” The word passes his lips lifelessly.
They run out of things to say to each other. Raxma turns to Cambara, who settles on making her move, convinced that she can manage to keep him at a safe distance at the same time save Raxma unnecessary embarrassment. Cambara’s best bet is not so much to offer apologies to Zaak and explain why she hasn’t been in touch as to placate Bile’s shattered self-containment. Bile might feel humiliated to bear testimony to her dealing crudely with her cousin, something he is not likely to approve of. Bile does not like the idea of Cambara and Zaak making fun of each other in front of so many strangers. He is of the old school, in which you do not tear into anyone, not least your partner or cousin, when others are around. She doesn’t recall them ever discussing Zaak, although it is possible that Kiin may have filled him in. Cambara keeps a good distance, if for no other reason than that she doesn’t want to be close to his foul mouth.