“I know it won’t be an easy task.”
“I’ve heard of several property owners who’ve come to grievous harm when they’ve tried to recover it,” he says exultantly.
Her smile reluctant, Cambara sets about changing the subject. So she takes a step away from Zaak and in the direction of the door, making as if she will open it to let in a youth who is hanging hesitantly about as he considers whether or not to knock.
“Where else would you go if you had transport?”
“To one of the big hotels.”
“You are not thinking of moving?” Zaak asks.
“I am not,” she replies. “Not yet.”
“Why one of the big hotels, then?”
Cambara looks at him in apprehensive silence, uncertain whether there is any advantage to gain from deliberately misinforming him as opposed to neglecting to tell him everything. She says, “I am looking for a friend of a friend who works in one of the hotels as a deputy manager.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“She is a friend of a friend,” she says with finality. Then she is determinedly quiet, content with the vague intelligence she has so far given him.
A gentle early-morning breeze is blowing, the air moist with the saltiness of the sea. With patience, a part of Cambara is waiting for Zaak to run off at the mouth about the dangers of the city and about fatal muggings, and to dwell, for a few sadistic moments, on the large number of women who are raped, men maimed, horror statistics that are meant to keep the likes of her indoors. The other part of her waits for his snide remarks about her naiveté and how she is living in fantasyland. She is resolved not to allow him to put fear into her or to remain his guest and dependent on him. Even so, she will pay attention to the hidden meanings of what he might say and interpret his words in the light of what information other people might volunteer, then collate and compare these in the hope of negotiating a safe course between the perils.
“I’m thinking perhaps I should come too,” he says.
She would rather they not go together when she tries to insinuate her way furtively into the family property. She would rather he did not know anything about her plans or how she intends to charm her way, lie if need be, to gain access. He is bound to disapprove of her method and very likely will sabotage her effort.
“I’d prefer if you lent me your driver and car.”
“Things are more complicated than you realize.”
“What’s so complicated about that?”
Waiting for him to explain, Cambara is under the impression that Zaak’s faraway look is that of someone racing to catch up with an idea running ahead of him but in the wrong direction.
He says, “We need to make detailed preparations.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll need an armed escort.”
“Why?”
Seeing him gloating smugly, she feels immediately shamefaced as she recalls from the few bits of information she has garnered about how Mogadiscio functions that, as a deterrent, it has become compulsory for owners of cars and trucks plying the roads to hire the services of armed escorts not necessarily to ensure the safety of the passengers but of the vehicle, because of the frequent carjackings that take place. She reminds herself that in a civil war setting, she must attach herself, perforce, to a broader constituency from which she may seek succor in the event of life-threatening complications. It is more than obvious that as a woman, alone, she stands no chance of surviving any of the possible civil war — related ordeals unless and until she appends herself to a group, armed and therefore clan-based, or civic in origin and therefore ideological. Hence the need to locate Kiin, an active member of the Women’s Network.
“I’ll organize the armed escort and the truck.”
“I wouldn’t dream of being a nuisance.”
“It’ll be a pleasure, not an inconvenience.”
“Please. You have important work to occupy you.”
He says, “I insist on coming with you.”
After a solemn moment in which she considers her options, she realizes that, like it or not, she has joined whichever group Zaak belongs to and that she might as well benefit from her association with him until she has disaffiliated herself from his clique and become part of Kiin’s.
“You come on the understanding that I call the shots,” she says. “We drive close to it, we do not stop anywhere, and the armed escort remains inside the vehicle. Is that agreed?”
“We are at your service,” he says.
She tells him, “I can’t thank you enough.”
Zaak is chuffed. She discerns a frisson of joy in his eyes, then an adrenaline rush of excitement lighting up his entire face. There is delight, which expresses itself in his bodily movements, for he makes as though steeling to embrace her, but, thinking better of it, he restrains himself in time before wholly committing himself. Moreover, there is a lascivious look in his shifty gaze. Even so, he focuses less on the upper parts of her body and more on her sandaled feet, like a teenager blushing at the sudden appearance of his paramour. Cambara is wickedly attractive to him. She knows what Zaak thinks of her, how much he has always adored her body. Not only is she aware of this, she is also conscious of the obvious fact that he is in awe of her irresistibility, which probably explains why he is acting in a provocative way, why he has been mean all along: because he hasn’t ever had her and never will.
“Why do you look rested and I do not?” he asks.
“Because I did not chew any qaat, that’s why.”
“You look rested and beautiful,” he says.
She looks away, smiling. She is in her summer cotton casuals: a pair of stretch slacks — comfortable to wear indoors, especially when relaxing — and a shirt open at the neck, her cleavage temptingly ensconced. She cannot help wondering if Zaak is tempted to take advantage of her situation, which is in upended disarray. Their current circumstances are the reverse of what they were several years ago, when he was the guest and the one in need, and she the host and the one in a position to be kind or unpleasant.
He knew the boundaries then and behaved as well as he could under the prevailing conditions. Some hosts are by nature inhospitable when it comes to their private spaces and are miserly if it is their turn to share it.
He says, “You’ll have to change if you want to go out of the house. You won’t want to attract unwelcome attention to yourself, which you most definitely will if you are dressed the way you are.”
“Would you advise me to change into a veil?”
“Since you have brought one? Yes. By all means.”
“I have brought two, as it happens.”
“Put on a veil on top of what you are wearing.”
“It will be unbearably hot.”
Quick to take offense, he turns his back on her and flings the words at her. He says, “It’s your call.”
She notices a smudge, dry and unwashed, at the lower corner of his lip and pictures him eating and bringing his plate close to him, like a Chinese peasant picking up morsels of food with chopsticks, inaccurately tossing food toward his mouth and missing occasionally. He was always a messy eater, Zaak. The residual smear of an uncooked meal, that is what she thinks she is looking at.
The man is a mind reader; he says, “Breakfast?”
The thought of eating food prepared by him in his house is so disturbing that she can only shake her head no. Actually, she means to pick up something somewhere else, she has no idea where or what. A hotel with a restaurant will do her nicely. There she will inquire if anyone knows how she can reach Kiin, her friend Raxma’s friend and cousin.