“He died for a struggle, he died for a national cause.”
“My father had a job to do, did he?”
“That’s correct.”
“And he died doing it?”
“That’s correct.”
And when night fell and most of the mourners had gone, the two of you were joined by Karin. “Here is a gift from the old man,” said she, giving you the portrait of Ernest Bevin.
You accepted it with a great reverence that befits the memory of the old man you loved, and the British political figure for whom the old man held high admiration. “Do you know who this man is?” said Misra, pointing a finger at the portrait.
You said, “Ernest Bevin was a dream of a man for well-informed Somalis.”
CHAPTER FIVE
I
There was nothing like sharing the robe the woman carrying you was wrapped in, nothing as warm, with the bodies, yours and hers, touching, oozing and sweating together — I naked and she not — and the rubbing together of the bodies producing itchy irritations, scratchy rashes and crotchy eruptions of skin. Then the quiet of the night would crawl in like an insect up one’s back — ticklish and laughter-producing. The darkness of dusk would take over one’s imagined sense of being: this time, like an insect bite so scratchy that you cannot think of anything else. And so, for years, I contemplated the world from the safe throne carved out of Misra’s back, sleeping when I pleased, swinging from her back as a fruit the thorn which is its twin, making water when I had to and getting scolded for it; for years I viewed the world from a height slightly above that of a pigmy’s head.
I seem to have remained a mere extension of Misra’s body for years — you saw me when you set your eyes on her. I was part of the shadow she cast — in a sense, I was her extended self. I was, you might even say, the space surrounding the geography of her body. And she took me wherever she went. As a result of which, I became the invited guest to every meal she was offered, partaking of every generosity she was given. I was the overhearer and eavesdropper of every conversation she had — the first to know if she was in pain or no; the first to notice if she had her period. Which I could tell from the odour her body emitted, from the way she shuffled about, from the constant washing she undertook and from the fact that I would get spanked for the slightest noise and she would shout at me more often. Yes, I was the time Misra kept — she woke when I awoke, clocking the same number of sleeping hours as I had done, feeling unwell when I was taken ill. Now, if I were circumcised, I thought to myself, and I became a man, yes, if…! What would become of our bodies' relationship? Surely I wouldn’t remain an obvious extension of Misra’s physicality? Surely, I could no longer be her third breast or her third leg? Perhaps she would put me down on the dusty ground to fend for myself, play by myself, and the relationship which the years had forged between our bodies would cease to exist. If seen alone by a neighbour, she wouldn’t be asked to explain where I was. I wouldn’t be the clothes she wore to a wedding party; I wouldn’t be the bringer-about of conversations, of friendships, and because I wasn’t with her, wouldn’t be seen with her, no man would make advances to her using my presence as a safe ploy, saying something like, “Oh, what a good-looking boy”, pinching my cheeks, asking me my name, how old I was and so on and so forth, until he and Misra spoke to each other and exchanged addresses and agreed to meet again — but without me. In other words, I wouldn’t remain the subject of conversations, when she was really the object of someone else’s real interest.
Her body (or should I speak of her bodies: one of knowledge, another of immortality; one I knew and touched and felt, the other for others such as Aw-Adan and Uncle Qorrax) anticipated my body’s needs (because I was a child, I had only one body, with hardly a shadow to speak of, this shadow being the size of a bird’s dropping whenever I looked for and found it) only to satisfy them. If I couldn’t pluck a fruit off a tree, Misra’s hand reached out and got it for me, and when I couldn’t soap the small of my back, her palm was there to scrub it. Likewise, when I couldn’t move my obstinate bowels, it was her applying massaging or kneading techniques which helped me do so.
Then I remembered the first painful separation: when I was sent to the Koranic School run by Aw-Adan. I was very, very unhappy For some inexplicable reason, it felt as if, between my feet and the rest of my body, there existed an unfillable space. It was only much, much later that I rationalized that perhaps this was the unused space (previously Misra’s) which had surrounded me for years but wasn’t there any more. My body had gone numb, my hands disobedient and unable to hold the reed with which I was supposed to trace the alif, ba and ta of God’s words in the flesh of His wisdom. And I was beaten by Aw-Adan, the teacher who ran the Koranic School, beaten until I made a pool of pee in which I sat, something which allowed the other children to make fun of me. Wet and miserable, I returned home to a Misra who didn’t show as much sympathy as I had looked forward to. Nevertheless, she scrubbed me clean, fed me and insisted that I learn to copy the emaciated Aleph which she wrote on my slate; that I leam to do properly the under-weighed Ba and the Ta as well But I couldn’t make the letters take shape — my Ba appeared sagged, my Aleph short and squat and very much unlike what either Aw-Adan or Misra had written; whereas my Ta was inundated with the messiness of the two dots above it, each big as the tears I shed. However, the sounds I made as I chanted were so beautiful, Misra admitted she sensed their charm pierce through her flesh. Each sound came out marvellously pronounced, shapely, smooth, with all the outer roughnesses removed, all the redundancies discarded. And together we moved forward. I repeated the letters after her, trembling with joy, shaking with delight, as I said what had been, to me, the joyful names of God. Deliberately, I would mispronounce a letter so she would correct me. With Misra, God became fun. To me, He was the letters I couldn’t draw, He was Misra’s thigh which I hit playfully as I chanted the alphabets of rejoice. In a week, I knew how to write my name, Misra’s as well as God’s. And when, three months later, I could recite the Faatixa, my uncle was invited to hear me perform. As I recited, each word was hot as a brand impressing upon my listeners the intensity of my feelings.
But I hated Aw-Adan, my Koranic teacher. I hated him more when he caned me, because I thought that each stroke struck a blow, rending a hole in the wall of my being. When with him, when at his school that is, I uttered every sound so it was inlaid with the contemptuous flames meant for him. Which was why I shouted loudest, hoping he would burn in the noises — ablaze with hate. In any case, once I got home, Misra studied my body as I did the slate upon which I had scrawled verses of the Koran, she studied it for sores and cuts as I re-read the suras to her.
One day, when taking the Juzz Camma examination, Aw-Adan interrupted me, and he beat me too. I didn’t see the reason why. I hadn’t done anything wrong and so I said what I always thought of him, speaking in the full presence of a crowd of youngsters who hadn’t known or heard what I had to say. And he caned me again and again. The haemorrhage of hate had run profusely to my head first, and then to the rest of my body: this meant that by the time I regained consciousness, I came to, shouting: “I am going to kill Aw-Adan; I am going to kill Aw-Adan; I am going to kill Aw-Adan.” I had a temperature the following day. Misra and I stayed in bed. Together, we recited Koranic verses; together, we re-created our bond of bodies, hers and mine. Then I repeated with the premeditated sanity of a murderer determined to kill an opponent, “Do you know I am going to kill Aw-Adan?”