Maybe it all came down to the sad fact that Zaak did not deserve all the help he received from Arda and Cambara, as he could not appreciate their contribution from the time he joined them as a preteen. She was certain that he had been in a state fit to be airlifted from Nairobi and to enter into the contract of the anomalous matrimony soon after he and she ended theirs in an unbecoming acrimony. From the comments attributed to him, you would think that she and Arda had done him a disservice and that they ought to apologize to him, not the other way around. The memory of what he had done cut far deeper than she had imagined, and she hoped that he would be desperate for a sense of self-recovery in the same way she was trying to channel her grief into a positive outlook, which is what prompted her to come to Mogadiscio in the first place.
Now she holds his gaze steadily in hers until his eyes grow rheumy and he turns away. She does not feel sorry for him, nor does she empathize with him, because she disapproves of his current behavior as well as his unwarranted treatment of his wife and children. A bully goes for the jugulars of the weak, and his wife Xadiitha filled the bilclass="underline" a young divorcée, barely literate and until then with no papers and no supporting family, who, in less than five years, gave him three girls. Cambara later heard unconfirmed reports that Arda had had a discreet hand in setting him up with Xadiitha. Rumor had it that Arda placed the first phone call to the family, from her and Zaak’s subclan, with whom Xadiitha was staying — they treated her more like a servant than a valued member of their household — and then managed to remain in the background right until the day of the wedding, to which she contributed financially. That her mother had done this did not bother Cambara any more than it upset her when she first learned that Zaak had shown his true colors: that he was a violent man. If a cloak of indifference were drawn over Zaak’s despicable mistreatment of Xadiitha; if it did not trouble Cambara enough either to confront him or to speak about it to Arda; if Arda made judicious interventions by having Xadiitha and the children visit for several weeks, it was because of selfish reasons, both on her part and her mother’s. (Cambara put it to Raxma: “I derive a sense of egotistic relief, knowing that he is no longer a nuisance to me but to Xadiitha.”) She didn’t need to elaborate that not only was Xadiitha dispensable but also she did not warrant Cambara and Arda’s worry. Nor was the poor woman worth a moment’s stress. If anything, Xadiitha was expedient, in that she helped them to rid themselves of Zaak, and there was no better way to achieve their purpose. Admittedly, it surprised her that her mother had never credited him with being a wife-beater and a sadist to his offspring. The shame of it: Officials from the social welfare department intervened to move his children out of harm’s way and provide them with protection. Looking back on it from that perspective, she did count herself lucky. Why, it might have been her lot too if the two of them had become man and woman.
She asks, “Did you say something about dinner?”
He looks at her in a wicked way, winking, and says, “My ambrosia is here, and therefore I’m not in the mood to eat anything else.”
“Maybe because qaat has dulled your taste buds?”
She thinks how little we know people when they change and their circumstances alter, especially when the two changes occur concomitantly. Like it or not, she has no choice but to adapt to her new situation. It is no easy matter to be in a city with which she is no longer familiar, what with the civil war still unfolding after more than a decade and her long absence from the metropolis. She cannot be sure that Zaak will take up the cudgel in safeguarding support of her if the city’s adolescent boys loyal to the warlord occupying the family property turn lethal. He is less likely to offer no help if the warlord refuses to vacate it. Maybe it is the norm for the likes of Zaak to behave abnormally in atypical circumstances.
She says, “You were never friends with food, unless someone else tamed it. I remember you either making do with the same diet every single day or running to the nearest restaurant at the sight of unpeeled onions. I felt you fled from uncooked meat the way some of us might flee a lion.”
“I’ve survived, as you can well see.”
“In what condition?”
“I am not complaining.”
When she can no longer focus her mind on these thoughts, she asks, “Where is the dinner that I must eat alone?”
“It is by the fridge,” he says.
“Not in the fridge?”
“The electricity grid has been off since before midnight yesterday,” he explains, “and the fridge is off. No point in keeping it switched on and no point in putting the food in it either.”
Cambara looks up at the bulb overhead, burning.
Zaak follows her eyes, nods several times, and then offers an explanation. “The supply of electricity for this — the second phase — originates from a small two-star hotel which generates its own power. The manager has a little ice-making factory. We tap into it.”
“How do you do that?”
“I make underhand payments to his workers,” he says, pleased with his graft. “The water heater, my bedroom, and this section of the living room are connected to this supplier. I pay five dollars a month for tapping into the system.”
“And to cook?”
“I don’t cook,” he says, as if proud of it.
Taken slightly aback because of the fierceness of his assertion, she makes as if to flatter him. She says, “Surely you’ve prepared the dinner you’re offering me? If offered, I would eat your Bolognese, I am so ravenous.”
“My dear, I couldn’t bear the pressure you place on anyone who deigns to present you with the food they have cooked for you,” he says. “You once described the sauce I prepared as looking like bird turd and tasting like chop suitable for a dog.”
She does not remember saying that to his face, but this sounds like something she might have said to her mother over the phone, and he might have been eavesdropping on her long-distance conversation with her. It would be very like him to have done that. No matter, his remarks do not produce the result he may have expected, even though they are acerbic, and he delivers them coolly, as though he has rehearsed them with the intention of hurting her; the keenness of his observation seems to dull against her skin, which feels indifferent to its scathing maliciousness. She stares at him long and hard, maybe in an attempt to think of badinage of equal incisiveness. Alas, she cannot.
He goes on. “I’ve seen you terrorize chefs.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Haven’t I seen you turn your nose up at good food, lovingly and humbly served to you?”
“I don’t recall ever making unfriendly remarks about your cooking,” she says, “never to your face, anyway.”
“Now we’re talking.”
He stares back at her in silence, his eyes reddening and his once-over smirking taking a more pronounced shape. He does not have to speak; his look says it all, in fact more than she can take at present or dare to cope with. This is the closest the two of them have ever come to sparring openly. If they have resorted to playing a power game — something they have never done before — then one of them has to concede defeat. There were the days when he avoided confrontations and withdrew into the tight-lipped taciturnity of equivocation, worried of what Arda might say or do to him. He was aware of his beginnings: that if it had not been for Arda, the likelihood of landing as many chances as he had under her patronage would have been either wholly nonexistent or minimal. Perhaps now that he is hanging on to the lowest rung of the ladder, he can’t be bothered.