His papers through, Cambara met his flight alone. With little love lost between Wardi and Arda, Cambara wondered if her mother would at least meet him, but the old woman would not acquiesce to her daughter’s request that she bring him to her house. The stand-off lasted for several months, until Cambara became pregnant, which happy event made Arda break with her stance: she rang to congratulate her daughter. Then Arda asked Cambara to visit, and mother and daughter had the opportunity to talk, but not necessarily about their estrangement from each other.
Arda moved in with them a fortnight before the due date, agreeing to accept the fait accompli presented to her: that Wardi, a man she thought of as a rogue, was the father of the baby to whom she would be a grandmother. Raxma was a godsend, in that she took Cambara away for long walks and entertained her when the going was toughest on all concerned. Arda did what she had to do, bit her tongue whenever she was tempted to speak, and learned to live with a man she did not trust for the forty or so days she was there to help look after the mother and the baby. Wardi absented himself often during that period, leaving earlier as a trainee attorney-at-law, arriving late at the most ungodly hours, and staying in the room farthest from his wife and her mother. On many a night, he did not even return home.
That there was a great deal of unease all around was plain to see, and everyone remarked on it. While most of Cambara’s friends fidgeted around the subject of the relationship, Raxma was the only one who dared to broach the subject: the full-blown affair he was having with Susannah, the principal partner of the law firm where he was doing his yearlong internship. Cambara, meanwhile, concentrated on giving birth to a healthy child, believing that transmitting negative vibes to the baby before its actual birth might somehow adversely affect it. The baby born, Wardi spent more time away from the apartment, presumably with Susannah, in the office. Cambara, her mother, and Dalmar’s moods often lapsed in an equal measure of joy in one another’s company and a mix of guilt and anger when it came to Wardi’s unspoken-of absence.
Now, as she hears the outside door of the house closing, presumably because Zaak has left for work, the image of Wardi — lying on his back with a tortured posture, his nose bleeding, his eyes runny with a sickly amber discharge, his lips cut and swollen — comes to her. She cannot help wondering whether their relationship would have been different had she not married him secretly. Then a fresh rage, mixed with hurt, rises within her, and she does not know what to do, short of continuing to hate herself for her own weakness.
With her son drowned, her marriage to Wardi as good as over, Cambara is in Somalia, where she has more time for reflection. Has she come to Mogadiscio because she hopes to empty her life of him?
FIVE
It is very early the following morning, and Cambara is already awake, the jet-lagged state of her body demanding that she get out of bed. She walks downstairs and then moves about with the stealth of a burglar, cautious, quiet, and looking this way and that. Finally, as she tiptoes into the kitchen area, certain that she has the place to herself, no strange male odor yet scented, and prepares to make herself tea and a bite to eat, if she can find any food. She discovers that she is face to face with Zaak, who, with an unpleasant smugness on his face, is hiding in a corner, waiting, as if in ambush.
“How is my dearest doing?” Zaak says.
The tone of his voice sounds self-satisfied; he seems to take much delight in seeing her surprised expression and obvious discomposure.
Unsettled, she takes refuge in an all-encompassing silence, careful not to make a tetchy remark that she would later regret. After a moment or so, she grows sufficient pluck to stare at him long and hard, and, as she does so, she affords herself the time to look back on their young years together. She finds it hard to picture ever having had the hots for him.
In those days, Cambara’s favorite read was an Italian girlie fotoromanzo monthly called Intimità. With her and her schoolmates, the affaires de coeur took precedence over everything else. Her friends, giggly, many of them spoiled brats because they belonged to the bourgeois classes, would not want to pay him a moment’s attention. When on two separate occasions Cambara tried to egg on two of them to dance with him at her birthday party, one of the girls refused, describing Zaak as “the pits.” Cambara pretended not to know what her friend was talking about, when that was certainly not the case, and then rose to his defense, saying, “He is just insecure, the poor fellow, but he is nice, once you get to know him.” Some of her friends started to tease her, one of them predicting that whoever took a fancy to Zaak was sure to be led to “Endsville.” No doubt she has ended up doing just that.
Now Zaak asks, “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, I did, considering,” she replies.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“I have a long day ahead,” she says.
“What are your plans?”
Just as she readies to answer him, if evasively, she starts at a sudden noise, which disorients her. She looks in the direction of the kitchen and then up at the roof, hoping to identify the source of the scurrying sound, but she cannot decide if it is that of rats or other rodents, and if this is coming from somewhere up in the ceiling or from the scullery. Finally, she is drawn to an identifiable ruckus: a diesel truck arriving outside, its doors opening and closing, a number of youths alighting, and then the hubbub of human voices approaching.
“That’ll be my lift,” Zaak explains. He pauses and then adds self-importantly, “The truck comes with its armed escort, six youths and the head of the security unit, formerly a major in the disbanded national army.”
He makes as if to get up, taking a good while before he manages to rise to his feet. When finally he does so and moves, it is as if he has metal in his knees, his every step a stumble of sorts; he appears incapable of coordinating his movements. He pauses, straightening his back, and rubs his spine, then his fogged eyes.
He says, “I am late for work, as it is.”
“Can your driver give me a lift?” she asks.
“Where to?”
“To our family house,” she says.
He shakes his head in disbelief. He affects a smile before looking away, and pretends to be concerned.
“Are you mad?” he asks.
“I won’t go into the property,” she vows.
“What do you mean, you won’t go into it?”
“In fact, not only will I desist from going into the property, but I will also make sure not to show myself to the minor warlord occupying it,” she says.
“Exactly what do you intend to do?”
“I just want to see the family property.”
“In which you’ve never lived.”
“Because it was rented out to foreign diplomats.”
“A property you haven’t set eyes on for decades.”
“I would like to see it up close,” she says, “and get to know where it is in terms of where we are, your place.”
“You could do with a bit of help, couldn’t you?”
“To be honest I could.”
“Tell me more.”
“What is there to tell you?”
He asks, “You don’t expect the family occupying the house to present you with the keys and apologize as soon as you meet them, do you?”
“Are you taking me for a fool?”
“You’ll be acting like one if you do not take into account the fact that you are courting danger,” he warns her. “It will not be a walk in the park to gain access to the property, still less to dislodge him.” He pauses, grins ostentatiously, and then adds, “He won’t give it up without a fight.”