A snicker. Then, “Will you rent it or sell it?”
“I haven’t figured out what I’ll do,” she says.
Struck by the sorrow spreading on his countenance, he is perhaps mourning like a man watching the passing of an age. He quotes a few lines from an Arab poet, and imagines seeing a dove struck in midflight and shot at the very instant she gazes upon her destroyed nest; the dove dies. The image of Cambara meeting a sorry end makes him shake his head in disapproval. However, he does not speak of the ruin he envisions for anyone who attempts to dislodge a warlord, minor or major, from the house he occupies.
He asks, “Why wrest the property from those living in it if you have no idea what you will do with it?”
“Because it’s mine,” she says.
“And you want it back, no matter the risk?”
“What risks can there be?”
He has heard of a handful of property owners who have been gunned down when they tried to repossess what was legally theirs. Some have reportedly been harassed and run out of town; others have been humiliated and their womenfolk raped to teach them a lesson. No longer sure if there is any point in voicing his admonitions, he wonders if her determination to forge ahead with a plan hatched in Toronto, while she was enraged and with no intimate knowledge of the situation on the ground, is tantamount to a death wish. The more he thinks of it the more surprised he is that Arda made no mention of Cambara’s intentions. Is it possible that she has no idea how mad her daughter is? Wardi had once been the cause of their separation, when daughter and mother wouldn’t exchange a greeting. Could it be that they were barely on talking terms and that Arda had rung him to host Cambara out of concern for her safety, no more?”
“Do you know who the occupant is?” he asks.
“Tell me what you must tell me, anyway.”
“His name is Gudcur,” Zaak says, “and he is the ringleader of a ruthless clan-based militia raised from the ranks of one of Mogadiscio’s brutal warlords.”
“I don’t stand in awe of any of the warlords.”
“Have you worked on the practical side of things?”
“What might these be?”
“How you are going to go there and so on?”
“I was hoping you would point me in the general direction of the place, since I won’t recognize it, because of the state the whole neighborhood is in,” she says, taking a sip of her now cold tea. “I would appreciate it if you took me round and showed me the outlay of the area. You can leave the rest to me.”
“Any contingency plan if you are hurt?”
“I hear what you’re saying,” she says impatiently.
“I want you to know I’ll take no part in it.”
“I am aware of that.”
A sudden harshness comes into his eyes, and she stares back hard at him. Maybe she is hoping to shame him into withdrawing his pledge not to be party to her lunacy. He absorbs her reproving stare with the equanimity of a sponge taking in more water than it can hold, and, having nothing better to do, he starts to sort the rice from the chaff, preparatory to cooking the risotto for their evening meal.
Growing restless in the extreme, Cambara rises to her full height and then, as an afterthought, bends down to gather the tea things. As she does so, Zaak has a good glimpse of her cleavage, and, fretful, he stirs in his chair. Both are conspicuously nervous, and Zaak, the first to move, takes two long strides in the direction of the toilet, entering it, maybe because the door to it happens to be the only one that is near and open or maybe because he needs a place where he can hide his embarrassment. For her part, she draws her lips back into a huge grin as she says to herself, “In addition to being a loser, he is a wanker.”
When, several minutes later, he joins her in the kitchen, she is drying her hands after having washed the pile of dirty dishes. She has her back to him, standing imperiously in front of the sink, her head bent slightly to one side, her body tall as a pole, motionless and in concentration. He cannot work out what is on her mind, in part because of her air of toughness, practiced, and also because of her determination. She will work on regaining the inner calm that she first lost on the day her son died and that she thought she would never ever recover on the morning she beat Wardi up. Then she will prepare for the ultimate battles. She intends to reject death; she means to celebrate life, and she can only do this away from Zaak, not with him. She prays that Kiin will prove a helpful, trustworthy friend on whom she can rely.
Midway through drying the plates, she turns round. Zaak, as if on cue, reassembles his features, adorning his fat lips with a beautiful smile.
“What is on your mind?” he asks.
“It may not make any sense to you, but I am thinking that mine is a life that needs simple satisfactions,” she says. “I want my own property back, and I want to put my life together the best way I can, on my own terms and under my own steam.”
“Does Wardi figure in any of this, somewhere?”
“I have no wish to factor him in,” she replies.
“Maybe that is the problem?”
“How is that?”
The word “problem” has in Zaak’s view an erotic edge to it; it boasts of a territoriality, if you will, of things hidden, of sweets binged on, of lies spoken and not owned up to, of the death of a child not as yet satisfactorily mourned. And she? She is wholly unanchored by his use of the word in its erotic sense. Maybe “problems” arouse him.
“Might I suggest something?” he asks.
“Go ahead.”
“Think ‘danger’ before you do something rash,” he says. He sounds wise, at least to himself, and he grins from cheek to cheek, euphoric. “Meanwhile, you and I will work on arriving at a modus vivendi agreeable to us both.”
She moves about as though she has been cast loose from everything that might hold her back, her eyes twinkling with a knowing smirk, lit with a torch of mischief.
“You are on your own if you decide to visit the property,” he says. “I am making it clear for the last time. I’ll come nowhere near the place.”
“We’ll stop half a kilometer away and won’t come out of the truck. You will point me in the direction of the house so I can familiarize myself with the surrounding landmarks.”
“All set,” he says.
“Just a moment.”
And she goes to her room upstairs and returns shortly, wearing an oversized veil, khaki-colored, dark mirrored glasses, and on her head, although she doesn’t need it, a scarf to further disguise her appearance.
Then they go for a drive to reconnoiter.
SIX
Cambara, reminding herself to ask Zaak to give her a set of keys, gets into the four-wheel-drive truck, clumsily hitching up the bottom end of her veil and eventually reclaiming its loose ends from the sharper corner of the vehicle’s door, in which it had gotten caught. She heaves herself up into the passenger seat, first by raising herself on the heels of her palms, her entire upper body leaning forward in a tilt, and then by lifting the rest of her body up into place, voilà! She shifts about a little agitatedly before repositioning herself in an attempt to be as far away from Zaak as possible.
Zaak replaces his house keys in his pocket, breathes anxiously in and out, the words catching at his throat when he starts to say something. He looks at Cambara with an incensed expression on his face. He turns away from her, the better to wait until she has made herself comfortable before he speaks. Then she observes that he is more eager to talk to his captive audience than he is to start the engine and get moving.
He says reproachfully, “You are being rash.”
“How so?” she asks.
He holds her gaze. Then he says, “Why the rush?”