“Why is that?”
“Because the practice has destroyed the local textile industries, as they can no longer compete with the dumpers. People have dubbed the practice with knowing cynicism; who-die clothes from who-die stalls!”
Soon enough, a vast sorrow descends upon Cambara, as she remembers how she had taken a suitcase full of her dead son’s clothes, and donated them to charity so they might be parceled out among Toronto’s poor. Of course she does not know where the clothes that have survived her son have ended up. Years back when she lived here, it was the tradition for well-to-do people to offer the clothes of their dead folks to a mosque. Now, in the harsh light of what she has just learned, she is aware that it won’t do to shrug it all off. She will have to think of how best and sanely to dispense with the garments to which she attaches fond memories — her living, active son wearing them. She will wait for a few days before deciding what to do and among whom to distribute them, gratis, no doubt.
He says, “What do you say? Shall I take you to a who-die stall to buy a veil?”
Cambara sidesteps his question, putting one to him herself. “Hadn’t you given up smoking many years before you left Toronto?” she asks.
“Yes, I did.”
“Then why have you gone back?”
“One vice leads to another,” he says with a smirk.
“How do you mean?”
“Qaat chewing is the first vice I’ve picked up coming here,” he says, waving his cigarette. “It passes the time.”
“What does? Smoking?”
“Qaat chewing helps me to bear the aloneness of my everyday life,” he says. “You see, Mogadiscio is a metropolis with none of the amenities of one. There is nothing to do here: no nightclubs, no places of entertainment, and no bars in which to drown your sorrows, as even the taverns are dry of liquor. Only restaurants.”
“No cinemas?”
“None to speak of.”
“No theaters?”
“None,” he says.
“What has become of the National Theatre?”
“The National Theatre is in the hands of a warlord whose militiamen have used the stage and props, as well as the desks, doors, ceiling boards, and every piece of timber, as firewood. The roof has collapsed, and everything else — the cisterns, the sinks and the bathtubs in the washroom, not to speak of the iron gates, the computers — all has been removed, vandalized, or sold off.”
“What if someone wants to put on a show?”
“It would be a hit, but it will never happen.”
“You mean because of the warlords who run the city?” she asks.
“Or the Islamic courts that will step in to stop it going ahead,” says Zaak.
“On what grounds?”
“On moral or theological grounds.”
“But you reckon ordinary folks will watch it?”
“I reckon they would,” he replies.
Cambara’s enthusiasm is unconcealed. “How do the armed youths entertain themselves when they have time on their gun-free hands?”
Zaak replies, “They watch videocassettes of Hindi, Korean, Italian, or English movies.”
“Surely they are not schooled in these languages?”
“The movies are dubbed into Somali.”
“Dubbed? By whom?”
Chuffed, Zaak is clearly pleased that he has for once impressed Cambara with his knowledge about something of which she hasn’t an idea.
“There is a burgeoning dubbing industry in Mogadiscio,” he says. “There are also kung fu films, locally produced and entirely shot here.”
“Where are they shown?”
“In the buildings that once belonged to the collapsed state, which are now free-for-all, run-down, and populated by the city’s squatters. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the city polytechnics, the secondary schools.”
“How are the films distributed?”
“The Zanzibaris, who have come fleeing from the fighting in their country,” Zaak informs her, “have cornered this side of the business. They have total control, Mafia-like.”
“Have you seen the dubbed movies yourself?”
“No, I haven’t.”
Maybe he has time only for qaat, she thinks, then she asks, “Do you know anyone who has?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
She needs to get in touch with Kiin, the manager of Maanta Hotel, who, according to Raxma, a close friend of Cambara’s back in Toronto, is well connected and might serve the salient purpose of Cambara’s accessing information about the videocassettes, and building local contacts, including the Women’s Network, which may help her with all sorts of matters.
Cambara will admit that she has made a faux pas arriving in Mogadiscio unprepared, with no addresses and no telephone numbers of anyone except Zaak and no personal contacts. Perhaps it is too late to think of ruing her impromptu decision to come. Granted, she mulled over the visit for a long period. No matter, she won’t engage Zaak in serious talk until she has been here for a while.
She has no idea what Zaak will think of it, but she cannot help imagining him being more sarcastic than her mother, who reacted with unprecedented bafflement when Cambara informed her of her imminent trip to the country. Asked why, Cambara, in a straight approach to the task informed by a touch of defiance, told her that she meant to reclaim the family property, wrest it from the hands of the warlord. Arda instantly fumed with fury, describing her daughter’s plan as a harebrained ruse. “This is plain insane,” Arda had observed. Then the two strong-headed women battled it out, Cambara pointing out that those warlords are cowards and fools and that it won’t be difficult to be more clever than they so as to boot them out of the family property.
“This is downright suicidal,” Arda reiterated.
After arguing for days and nights, Arda consented to Cambara’s “ill-advised scheme” with a caveat: that they involve Raxma, who had wonderful contacts in Mogadiscio, and, while waiting for things to be put in motion, that Cambara should either wait in Toronto or go ahead and stay with Zaak. Being a schemer with no equal anywhere, Arda set to work clandestinely on setting up a safety net as protective of her daughter as it was capable of keeping her abreast of every one of the girl’s madcap schemes. Only then did Arda agree to “give her blessing for whatever it is worth for a plan as flawed as a suicide note.”
A battlewagon hurtling down the dirt road and coming straight at them startles Zaak, who grabs her right arm and pushes her off the footpath into the low shrubs. The vehicle is carrying a motley group of youths armed to their qaat-ruined teeth. Cambara picks herself up, dusts her caftan, and has barely sufficient time to stare at the backs of their heads before the battlewagon vanishes in the swirl of sand it has helped to raise.
“Are you okay? You are not hurt?” Zaak asks.
Cambara has already moved on. She asks, “Do the warlords themselves know why they continue the fighting?”
“I don’t follow you,” Zaak says.
“Are they and their clansmen economically better off than they were when the civil war erupted? And is their position more secure? Why don’t they stop destroying what they’ve illicitly gained?”
Zaak takes his time before answering the questions, but when he does, he adjusts the tone of his voice to that of someone quoting from someone else.
He says, “The warlords make as much sense as the idea of bald men fighting over the ownership of combs, knowing that they have no more use for it.”