The man running the general store stands tall and bearded on the other, the owner’s, side of the counter. He smiles at her when she enters. The two youths who stand on either side of him help him run the business; they do not share a family resemblance with him. In fact, they strike Cambara as the kind that make an honest living during much of the time but may resort to illicit activities in their spare hours. When she looks back at the man, who has now instructed them to attend to other customers, the man turns to her; very businesslike he asks what he can do for her. Heartened, she removes her face veil to make it easier for her to engage his attention.
Then she notices his active eyes, taking the measure of every customer who walks in. For those he deems dangerous, perhaps he prepares to put his guns to use; for moneyed clients, he must display his charm. She suspects she belongs to the latter order. He has another classification for the mendicants touching him for alms, the good people who’ve fallen on hard times, and the bad people, with their bad smell and their bad habits.
Her shoulders slacken into a sense of relief as she concludes, with little evidence, that he has assigned her a category of her own; a woman apart. She stands motionless, hunched in the manner of someone turning serious thoughts over in her head. She beckons to him to come closer and, when he does, tells him that she has no local currency, only U.S. dollars in large denominations, and that she needs change before buying anything. He smiles, nods, and says, “No problem, no problem. Now, what would you like?”
A bad shopper, she is in the habit of going into supermarkets, even when in Toronto, to buy a couple of items only to end up forgetting the list, putting in her shopping basket or taking to the cash register a number of articles that do not match her original tally. With no transport at her disposal and not knowing when she may next find herself in a supermarket as well stocked as this, Cambara assembles the list in her head and allows herself time to improvise as she looks at what is available and on the shelves before speaking it aloud. The shopkeeper has a piece of paper and a pen handy, ready to write everything down. He says, “Take your time. I am here all day.”
She relegates a couple of thoughts about general stores similar to this to a back burner. Only she can’t help wondering who the wholesalers are that run the risks of importing these articles into the country and who their business partners overseas are. It is common knowledge that the civil war has been responsible for the destruction of Somalia’s meager industrial base, the warlords profiting from the dismantling of its infrastructure, which they sold as scrap metal, Somali rumor mills in Toronto have it, to Abu Dhabi and China.
Now his tone urges her on; he says, “Waiting.”
She understands this to mean that she has waited long enough, and straight away the provisional list that she will add to runs easily off her tongue: a kilo each of sugar, of flour, and of rice; a chopping board; a kitchen knife; two, three dishcloths; a packet of soap powder; some tea, preferably in bags; instant coffee; dried herbs, curry powder, and spices; tomato concentrate in tins; spaghetti; bottled water; several bottles of soda; paper plates and paper cups; plastic knives and forks; and napkins. A few packet of sweets, bars of chocolate, shampoo, soaps.
“Is that all?” he asks.
The shopkeeper’s voice is of a comforting quality; it reminds her of many a friend of her parents whom as a young girl she unfailingly addressed as “Uncle.” She finds his voice so soothing that she becomes wary of trusting him fully. Yet she contemplates easing the head-covering segment of the body tent a little when another woman wearing a veil and under it a curve-hugging frock comes into the shop to buy a bottle of soda. Cambara follows the woman with her eyes, remarking to herself that the woman is wearing the veil for the sake of form and feels at ease in who she is. Tomorrow, Cambara promises herself, she will wear a less heavy-duty veil of Yemeni origin, the fabric cotton, to let her skin breathe normally. Next time.
“Anything else?” the shopkeeper is asking her.
“You don’t have vegetables, do you?” She is aware that he doesn’t carry them, but she also knows that she can take advantage of the situation, place her order, and he will deal with it somehow. She bases her assumption that she will get her way and have his assistants fetch her all she needs on the fact that the man takes her for a respectable and well-to-do woman, just come from the Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia, where women of high standing seldom mix with the rabble. No doubt, he will charge extra for the service.
“We can get you some, if you like,” he offers.
She reels off the list. “In that case, a kilo of okra, one each of potatoes, carrots, half a kilo of onion, half of fresh tomato, three or four cloves of garlic, and some lemon or lime.”
He sends out one of his boys to “bring nothing but the best of the best” and to “come back quick, quick,” and asks the other to give “the lady” a chair. This done, every other shopper takes notice of her, and more than a dozen envious eyes turn on her. Cambara doesn’t look bothered, reminding herself how often she has gloried in her role on the stage as an actor.
When the shopkeeper and his assistants have gathered everything, packed them professionally in shopping bags, and put them on the counter, some piled on top of each other, as if waiting for her to bag them in her own way, the man informs her that he has done his sums. Cambara makes yet another request that she assumes will exalt her in his esteem, marking her as belonging to a class apart.
“A taxi, please. Can you get me one?”
She sits back, her posture that of a woman accustomed to giving orders and used to them being obeyed.
The man nods ponderously, then whispers in the ears of one of the youths whom he sent out earlier to get the vegetables. Demurring to the shopkeeper, the youth goes through a back door so fast that Cambara feels that he will be back with a taxi in tow in less than a minute.
Cambara then produces a fifty-dollar bill folded over until it is as small as a postage stamp, unfolds it and lays it on her spread lap, then smooths it with her open palm before handing it to the youth, who in turn passes it to the shopkeeper.
The shopkeeper holds it discreetly to the light as he speaks, most likely studying the genuineness of its watermark and deciding whether it is counterfeit. He nods as if to himself, opens a drawer, lifts a tray within it, and then places the fifty-dollar note in a false bottom.
He turns to say to her, with every word dripping with the deference of the most irritating sort, “Our hearts sweeten when we see the likes of you visiting our city again.” Her skin crawls with millipedes of hair, hearing the man’s ill-expressed feeling. “This is proof, if anyone wants one, that our city is no longer as dangerous as before.”
All of a sudden, Cambara wishes her mother were here to hear the shopkeeper say that. Now she remembers her last encounter with Arda and replays their conversation. Her mother, on the day, had a guest — a former Canadian diplomat thanks to whose facilitations and kind interventions her parents, Zaak, and Wardi were all able to go to Canada as landed immigrants. Arda, given to the habit of speaking about Cambara blamably and always in the third person, even when she is present, explains to Mr. Winthrop that her daughter’s lack of humility, her inability to appreciate the simple aspects of living, worries her more than anything else. Arda adds, “Just imagine this. She is getting over the loss of her one and only son, my one and only grandchild, and before she is done with mourning, complicates things more. There is calm in acting humbly, in being simple. Not my daughter.”
Mr. Winthrop feigns interest. “What’s she up to?”