The paint on the inside walls was still fresh, the patrons rare, the business lean, when one afternoon Raxma walked in, not so much to pay for the services of a makeup artist as talk. How she talked, as if at the touch of a button, about the plans she had the moment Cambara had seated her at a chair and, wrapping a white cloth around her front, asked, “And what have we got here?” For one thing, Cambara did not expect Raxma to answer the question, which to her was another way of saying “What can I do for you?” or “How would you like me to be of service to you?” For another, she was equally intrigued, once the flood of words suffused with charged emotion sluiced out of the new client, when, by way of introduction, she presented herself as “Raxma” and mentioned a friend of hers and Cambara’s, a name that rang no bell in the memory of her listener. Prompted by Cambara, Raxma talked not as if she were sad or enraged, not at all; she spoke as if she were talking into a Dictaphone from which someone else would transcribe her chatter into decipherable text. Even so, she did not pass up the opportunity and therefore spoke quite openly to Cambara about her agitated state of mind, as if they were old friends. Raxma explained that she had just discovered that her husband of many years had been cheating on her with one of his assistants at the hospital where he worked as a consultant. The expression on Raxma’s face, as she talked, seemed snarled up into a sudden tangle of indefinable emotions. Moreover, her wild gestures, now that Cambara had meanwhile removed the cloth from around her and freed Raxma’s hands to gesticulate liberally, alerted Cambara to a deep hurt. This set Cambara’s mind to do what she could to hearten Raxma, at least gladden her day.
Remaining inside but not drawing the curtains, Cambara put up the “Closed” sign and waved away a couple of potential customers. Face to face with Raxma, she listened some more as her newfound friend elaborated on the agonized articulation of her suffering. Half an hour later, they left the studio and together — with Raxma still talking and Cambara attentively listening — went to a café where Cambara was a regular; sat in a corner, away from all the others; asked for tea, coffee, and cream; and chatted. They remained there until the lights came on, had a light dinner, and then drove in their respective cars to Cambara’s apartment, where they had more drinks.
Raxma rang her two boys, addressing them by their pet names, into which she put as much affection as she could into each of the syllables they comprised. It was clear that the two boys were the world to her and that she would not do anything to harm them, including denying them the filial right to live together with both parents. Before ringing off, she suggested, since she was coming home late, that they order a pizza and pay for it from the cash kitty. They were very happy to do that. Of course, she knew they would watch TV all night, if they could, and not, as they promised, do their homework. When she returned from speaking to her two boys on the phone, Raxma was saying “Good riddance to bad rubbish” in the improvisatory manner of an actor rehearsing a part for the first time.
Hesitant to ask what Raxma meant, Cambara looked away, obviously pretending that she did not hear anything. Raxma hung her head in pensive silence, narrowing her eyes into slits of utter concentration. Apparently, she had made a snap decision in the instant between the time she suggested that the boys order a pizza and the minute she got back into the living room with Cambara. Raxma resolved to send the boys off to boarding school, and she shared her impulsive choice with Cambara.
“What will you do with the time and freedom that you earn from this?” Cambara asked.
Raxma said, “Do you know a lawyer?”
As luck had it, Cambara had a lawyer friend, a neighbor she had known for a number of years. Mauritanian-born Maimouna was a diehard feminist who had experience as a litigator for the cause of women in the Canadian courts. A powerhouse, Maimouna was dedicated, loyal to the wisdom attributed to Simone Weil that if there is a hideous crime in modern society, it is repressive justice against women. She saw her principal role as a fighter for women’s causes, especially the Muslim wives who often had a raw deal in Canada. A patron of the studio and someone she had known for much longer, Maimouna frequently dropped in on Cambara both at work and at home.
“When would you like to meet a lawyer?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Would you like me to present you to one?”
“Yes, soon, and preferably a woman.”
“Consider it done,” Cambara said.
“Then I will take him to the cleaners.”
“After which?”
“If successful, then I’ll work toward settling on an occupation,” Raxma said. “The idea of getting into the import-export business appeals to me. I will have to see how much money I am able to raise from taking someone I know to the cleaners.”
She did not find it curious or annoying that Raxma never, ever mentioned her husband by name — something, Cambara knew, Somali women who were displeased with their spouses tended to do as a way of self-distancing. Such women referred to their spouse only in the third person, as “he” or “him,” without once allowing his name to pass or, rather, sully their lips.
A phone call half an hour later sufficed to get Maimouna to come to Cambara’s apartment for a chat and a bit of salad, and before midnight, the lawyer agreed to represent Raxma. All told, it took about nine months to set a date for the preliminary hearing of the case and less than a year for the couple to reach an out-of-court settlement. In the hiatus, Cambara saw a lot of Raxma and her two boys, spending a lot of her free time with them or their mother. All four of them would drive to Ottawa in one vehicle and visit Arda on long weekends. As it turned out, Raxma was the only person other than Arda who was privy to Cambara’s true thinking about becoming a spouse to Zaak. It was during these early days that Cambara filled her in on what was happening and Raxma chose to stay protectively in the background, reserving the right to remain circumspect until Zaak’s arrival in Toronto. She displayed untiring loyalty to Cambara and held her hand all through her ordeals. When it came her turn to help Cambara, whose life was upended, Raxma stepped in and provided companionship and other forms of encouragement to speed her recovery. She pronounced her catchphrase—“Good riddance to bad rubbish”—on the day Cambara booted out Zaak. Then Raxma filled a designer’s clay pot with water, and, to the accompaniment of ululation and loud drumming, Cambara, at her behest, took a stick to it, breaking it, so that the water, now set free, might flow out, a symbolic enactment of a woman’s release from eternal bondage. They had a weeklong party, together celebrating their status, two women rejoicing their newly enfranchised respective conditions, with Raxma decidedly backdating the coming of her freedom, because it was time, she argued, that she commemorated the event with a reinvigorated sense of accumulated joy.
Before long, Cambara needed Raxma’s wise admonition, having made the acquaintance of a charmer named Wardi, whom she described as her one and only infatuation ever. As Cambara gushed about him in a midnight phone call from Geneva — Cambara did not ring her mother to share the news until several hours later — her advice took the shape of a warning wrapped, with flair, in an offer that Cambara could not refuse. Not only did she reprove her friend to stay clear of the fellow under whose magic spell she had fallen, but she also agreed that were Cambara to respond positively to her own heart’s dictates and choose to disregard her advice, then she could rest assured that this would not upset her at all. She would continue to support her, regardless. She concluded, “Don’t be deceived by his honeyed tongue, but if you feel you are in love and therefore a fool, then I am all for you, my sweet.”