She was back on her knees, scrubbing, using as a brush her open hand, and at times her nails, to rub away the sticky filth which wouldn’t be removed easily. She didn’t look up at you at all, pretending that you weren’t there, that you hadn’t asked her anything. She was defiantly quiet. Until you were about to move away Then you heard her sobbing between the noises her scrubbing had made.
“Am I to understand,” you started, but lost interest in what you were going to say when you heard Misra’s chest explode in a convulsive cry, like a child’s. And you fell silent.
VI
That night, cuddled up in each other’s embrace, and in bed, she spoke to you of a raid, so far undocumented in history books. Out of the raid, out of the dust of triumph, emerged a warrior, she told you, a warrior riding a horse, and as he hit his heels against the beast’s ribs, the warrior held tightly to a little girl, barely seven. The girl was his loot now that the enemy had retreated in haste, defeated. Other men returned with gold and similar booties — but not he. The little girl, now a young woman, would remember forever her dog howling with fear and anxiety and hunger, her cheeks shiny with mucus and with streaks of tears running down them; and she cried and cried and cried, seated, as though tied hand and foot to a bedpost, on the horse’s back, a horse whose speed frightened her, as did the fact that he was taking her away from the world she had been familiar with so far. She was very pretty Her hair had been shaven in the style your people shave children’s skulls when suffering from whooping-cough, although the little girl’s tuft on the skull was longer and slightly curlier. When the warrior arrived back in his hamlet, Misra went on telling you her story, his people intimated to him that they were afraid the girl might be traced to them — the soldiers of the Empire would follow the civilian invaders and the punitive expeditions would find many unburied dead. So he rode away, travelling as far south as he could, and the two of them, on a horse’s back, ended up in the vicinity of Jigjiga.
In Jigjiga, the warrior, weary and fatigued from travel and worry, took ill. He stopped at the first house and knocked on the first door and spoke with the first man he met — luckily for him, the owner of the house, a very wealthy man. The warrior and the little girl were both given generous hospitality A day later, the warrior died. And the little girl, who had been taken for his daughter, fell into the caring hands of the wealthy man. He raised her with his own children, making her embrace the Islamic faith, making her undergo the infibulatory rites, just like the other girls of the community. But he raised her with an eye to taking her as his wife when she grew up. And this he did, when she was seventeen. So, the man the little girl thought of and addressed as “Father” for ten years of her life, overnight became a man to her, a man who insisted he make love to her and that she call him “husband. In the end, the conflicting loyalties alienated her, primarily from her self. And she murdered him during an excessive orgy of copulation.
To escape certain persecution, she joined a caravan going south to Kallafo, a caravan in search of grain to buy. She introduced herself as Misra Haji Abdullahi — taking anew the name of the man who became her father and whom she murdered as her “man”.
And you asked, “The girl’s father and mother? Does anybody know whatever became of them? And whether or not they are still alive? Or if one of her parents has remarried or has had another child?’”
You were surprised to learn that the girl was the offspring of a damoz union between an Oromo woman and an Amhara nobleman. She was the female child of the union, one in which her mother agreed, as is the custom, to live with an Amhara nobleman, none of whose other wives gave him a male child. The contract was for a period between a fortnight and six months. The girl was conceived by the “salaried” concubine. Because the issue was a girl, the man lost interest in her, abandoning mother and child to their separate destinies and uncertain fortune. “Yes, yes, but did the girl have a half-brother or a half-sister?”
“No one knew.” That was her answer.
“And then what happened?”
Again, she entered the household of yet another wealthy man. This time, she entered the household as a servant but was, in less than a year, “promoted” to the rank of a mistress and eventually as a wife. By the time she found Askar, the woman had been divorced. She had had two miscarriages and was discovered to be carrying, in secret, a dead child in her.
“A dead child in her, carrying a dead child in her living body?”.
“That’s right.”
“And then? Or rather, but why carry a dead child?”
“Then the living miracle in the form of Askar took the place of the dead child inside of her,” she said, holding you closer to herself, you, who were, at that very instant, dreaming of a horse dropping its rider. But you weren’t alert enough to note a discrepancy in this and Misra’s true story. For she had her own child who died at the age of eighteen months. Nor did you ever ask her why she told you this fictitious version. Or is your own memory untrustworthy?
VII
A week later, the following:
Late one afternoon, the Archangel of Death called at Karin’s place as though he had been invited to tea, just as you were invited to partake of the festive atmosphere, have a cake or two and biscuits too — and his share of the flowing conversation. When the opportunity presented itself, the Archangel whispered something discreetly in Karin’s old man’s ear, saying (you were told afterwards) that he, the Archangel, would return in precisely seven hours. So, would the old man finish, in elegance, all he had planned to do — wash, pray, say a few devotions, make a number of wishes, give his dardaaran to his Karin and, if it pleased him, tell her that time was up? In retrospect, you recall that the old man kept giving furtive glances to a timepiece by his mattress on the floor, rather like somebody who didn’t want to miss an important appointment. Together with Misra and Karin, you were making joyful noises and nothing seemed to be amiss. It was the placid look in the old man’s eyes that said to you that something was taking place, but you didn’t know what. First, Karin looked at you and then Misra and there fell the kind of silence which precedes an event of great significance. Somehow, Misra and you sensed your presence was standing in the way of Karin and her husband’s communicating a secret to each other. And so you left, leaving in your wake, you thought, a silence so profound you were sure a change of inestimable importance would occur in your lives.
Before midnight, the old man’s leaf fell gently from the tree on the moon. It was a most gentle death. Hush. And the soft falling of the withered leaf didn’t even tease the well of Karin’s emotions, nor did it puncture the lacrymatory pockets. She didn’t cry, didn’t announce the departure of the old man’s soul to anyone until the following morning. She stayed by him, keeping his death all to herself. She lay by him in reverent silence, he dead, she alive — but you couldn’t have told the difference, so quiet was she beside him.