It is then that a rank odor emanating from within the vehicle insinuates itself into the immense silence. Cambara is able to isolate the source of the putrid stench in no time, identifying its emitter: a boy in the back row who, out of embarrassment, holds down his head, cradling it in his hands. Apparently, the boy has fouled himself out of fright. She is for once undecided what to do, not that she knows what there is to say. It is too far for her to reach out to the boy, touch him, assure him that there is nothing to be ashamed of; too inconvenient to step out of the truck, go round and get back in, and embrace the boy. She looks away, her sense of discretion prevailing. Likewise, the older armed youths, who, covering their mouths and noses with their hands, surprisingly to Cambara, hold their tongues. However, the unfortunate boy’s age-mates are rip-roaringly laughing, pointing their fingers at the unlucky boy, one of them calling him Xaar Fakay, meaning “ShitLoose.”
Cambara waits for Zaak to move before acting on the instinct to intervene, interceding with the bigger boys to desist from bullying the hapless boy, whom, now that she has had a good look, she refers to as Tima Xariir, for his dark, silky, brilliantined hair. However, Cambara is helpless in the face of this new challenge, because it is one thing to make a fuss over the waste of one’s child; it is altogether another thing to clean up the mess of a preteen boy, armed, potentially unruly, and likely to pose a problem later.
Zaak, for his part, does not respond to SilkHair’s predicament as a grown man might. Angry and showing no empathy, he puckers his face, an indication that the odor has had more of an effect on him than it might on a woman who has dealt with a baby’s excreta. In her mind, Cambara links this incident to the scene earlier yesterday when, being most unkind, he told her, “Grow up, woman.” Now she feels like saying the same thing to him, to behave as an adult woman might. Zaak says, “Get out and walk.”
The boy raises his head, his eyes popping out, as if he were a goat a slaughterer has readied to kill. No one says anything as SilkHair works out how to get out of where he is without drawing more derision from his mates, knowing that the waste will have run down the legs of his sarong and will have soiled his nether regions too.
Cambara surprises everyone by saying, “There is nothing unnatural about what the boy has done, and I want him to stay in the truck.”
“No one wants him to remain,” Zaak says.
There is uncomfortable silence all around.
“I would like him to,” she says.
Zaak is ill at ease, not certain how to react.
Cambara says, “Or else I’ll go with him then.”
“Where will you go?”
“Where will he go?”
In the quiet that follows, she remarks that she does not smell anything. It feels as though the rank odor has been replaced by tension and anger, which make their demands on all her senses.
Zaak backs down. “Let’s go back to my place and then plan things better. Since we will need to have the inside of the car washed, I suppose the driver can do it better than we can. Besides, there is no point going forward.”
Cambara does not share her thoughts with Zaak, but she trusts he knows that she will turn SilkHair into a cause: clothe him, pamper him with bountiful love, given that she has plenty of it. She imagines that she has as much untaken love as a breast-feeding mother whose baby has died has milk. She thinks that the poor thing is most likely wearing the only sarong he owns and if they get back to Zaak’s, he won’t have anything to change into. Yes, she can give him some of the clothes that have survived Dalmar’s drowning. She preferred bringing them with her to Mogadiscio, rather than sending them along to the Salvation Army in her neighborhood in Toronto. Dalmar’s clothes will fit SilkHair nicely. What’s more, she will take care of him, disarm him, school him, and turn him into a fine boy, peace-loving, caring.
SEVEN
Cambara steps out of the vehicle with the determined step of someone who knows where she is going and what she will be doing. Before making much headway, she pauses in her stride, slowing down, and soon enough she remarks that she has SilkHair by her side, waiting expectantly. He is smiling sweetly, and, his hand extended out to her, it is as if he is proposing that she take it and hold it; he is nodding his head by way of encouragement, if she needed one. Cambara is under the positive impression that the young fellow has arrived at a conclusion similar to hers: that he wants to join her, walk alongside her, be with her wherever she is headed. Not in so many words, though. A mere glance can tell her how pleased he is to stand physically close to her, as if pointing out that they share more than either has realized until now.
His hand gingerly smooths the gorgy silkiness of his unkempt hair with studied effeteness, and Cambara wishes she could help him neaten it more by running her fingers through it, grooming it. Her sweeping glance registers everything around — from the driver and the other youths to the guns and, farther right, to where Zaak is scampering away, in a huff. At a midway point in a thought not yet matured, she cannot decide what has become of the boy’s missing upper tooth; another is already going brown, maybe rotten at the root, an abscess not dealt with in time. Or did the missing tooth suffer a sudden trauma? Cambara intends to ask him what has happened to it and to pay the dentist’s bill to have it fixed. Of course, it is possible that he has lost the tooth in fierce fighting or in rough play not so long ago. There is a lot that she wants to know about him — and soon.
“Come with me,” she says to SilkHair.
She motions with her head for him to follow her, which he does very willingly. He hesitates for a fraction of a second, however, wondering whether to take along his weapon and, if not, what to do with it. In the event, he acts decisively and stands it against the wall closest to him but not without removing the cartridge, which, he discovers, contains three bullets. He looks politely in her direction and nods apologetically before pocketing them all. Then he indicates that he is ready to go. These well-thought-out moves leave an impression on Cambara, who feels more positive about him than before. She is of the view that he is a responsible lad who she hopes will give her pleasure to look after. She can’t imagine her son, Dalmar, ever doing a thing like that. No doubt, SilkHair’s and Dalmar’s situations are different, the one raised in Toronto in a caring home, the other born in an immense wasteland, filled with civil war gloom.
She says, “Come,” and moves as though all of a sudden she has freed herself from every sort of impediment in her way, and walks up the stairway to her room now that she is also convinced that Zaak has retreated to nurse a huge sulk. This is nothing new to Cambara, who has known Zaak to withdraw into his moody silences or to leave one perplexed as to what one has done to annoy or slight him whenever he is in a fit of pique. She remembers him looking as sick as a dog suffering from diarrhea and taking shelter in ill humor. In contrast to him, Cambara is famously admired or feared for confronting problems head-on and immediately. Nor does she have difficulty admitting her failings, whatever these are. She is in her element only after she has sorted out a knotty situation; she is in an upbeat mood right after a fight, ready to work out a truce between her and the parties with whom she is warring. No backbiting for her and no slinking away or sinking into a brooding mood, while at the same time he bad-mouths others. She is eager to prove to Zaak and to the boy soldiers that her mettle is of a hardier stuff than all theirs put together. Bent on making things happen, she leads the way into the house, SilkHair following and the driver and the youths watching.