Knots (38 page)

“Especially Dajaal,” Seamus adds.

Then he apologizes for rescheduling their meeting. “In one way, I felt things were so barmy I sought solace in work. Came here, where I dossed down in one of the rooms on a mat. I couldn't bear the thought of returning to the apartment. Anyway, it was almost one o'clock in the morning when I was ready to take a break.”

“A formidable commitment, indeed,” she says.

Her eyes encounter his, and she looks into them from close range, the brownness of his dark pupils, which are in the process of withdrawing from being seen, startles her. Here is a man, she thinks, who might use his shamanic powers to good effect, if he were to choose to.

“There's a lot to be done,” he assures her.

She takes in her surroundings, agrees with him, and then adds, “But now that you've laid the foundation of the work, which is the most demanding aspect of any job, I'm certain that the remainder will be a lot easier.”

A man, most likely a plumber, walks by, his young assistant following, and they pick up a cistern each and then disappear into the bowels of the house without exchanging a word with either of them.

Seamus says, his eyebrows raised, “Espresso?”

Before responding to his offer, she commits a few moments to discovering where her two charges have ended up and what they have been doing. She locates them easily enough, because they are close by: SilkHair mixing chattily with the armed militiamen operating the gates; Gacal standing at the foot of the ladder, having attached himself to the electrician, busy passing him his tools and sharing a joke with another man removing coils of electric wire from their casings.

“I would love an espresso, thank you,” she says.

Then he says, “Sorry,” to Cambara and goes straight to where two of the militiamen have turned over a china washbasin to sit on, as they chat away with obvious excitement to SilkHair. Cambara hears him give the command
Kac
—Somali for “Stand up”—his pronunciation of the guttural
c
in
kac
perfect. The young men rise at his behest all right but, in typical Somali fashion, admit no wrong and argue in self-justification. According to them, their body weights together are so light they cannot break the washbasin by sitting on it. Seamus wags his finger at them and, before leaving them, speaks his last salvo.
“Maya, maya,”
he repeats. “No, no.”

He beckons her to follow him to the hall, which he has turned into a workshop. He goes behind a worktable, on which there are papers scattered where he may have scribbled his notes. When he sits down, his tools and some of the masks that he has carved since their last encounter are within easy reach. And to the right of the unoccupied surface of the worktable is a flask and beside it two demitasses. In a corner behind the worktable is an espresso machine and next to it several large bottles of mineral water; to the back of Seamus is a small fridge.

“Such heels, these militiamen,” he says.

Brooding and silent, he makes the espresso. She is taken with the beauty, the moment she sees them, of the lifelike face and head masks that Seamus has carved for her play in the likeness of eagles and chickens. The masks have become the object of her new enhancement; she is so captivated that she dares not turn her gaze away. No one looks happier than a touchy-feely Cambara who now lifts a full-bodied mask hewed out of fine wood in the semblance of a young eagle, almost bringing it close enough to her face to kiss its gorgeousness, then another, this time one sculpted in the semblance of a mother eagle, then one of a young chicken nervously cackling.

“What do you take with your espresso?”

“A glass of water, please,” she says, and she sits down and then turns around and extends both her hands to receive the espresso he has just made for her in one hand and then the water in the other.

Again, she focuses on the masks.

“They are gorgeous beyond belief,” she says.

“I'm not done with them.”

“I love what I see.”

“You are very sweet.”

She tells herself that a lot has indeed taken place since her first unannounced call at this house, in a body tent, making her acquaintance of Jiijo and then setting about worming her way into her confidence before moving in on her for the kill, so to speak. It has been a worthwhile effort.

Now she says to Seamus, “Tell me about Dajaal.”

“What do you wish to know?”

“What's bothering him?”

Seamus pulls at his liberally grown beard at the same time as he begins to insinuate a couple of the strands of hair close to the right side of his mouth into it.

“There is a lot that he keeps close to his chest. Dajaal has been in a snit ever since he completed his assignment, which, among other things, involved the repossessing of your property. When I pressed him, he admitted to his unhappiness; he is very upset that I've carved masks in the likeness of eagles and chickens,” Seamus says. “He does not approve of what we are doing.”

“To what do you ascribe this?” Cambara asks.

“I have never known him to reveal his religious leaning to this extent; I've never thought of him as gung-ho devout,” Seamus says.

Cambara scowls, then says, “I want to know what has unsettled Dajaal: seeing you carve the masks, or is he just raising a storm about other matters? I am not clear what exactly is forbidden in Islam and what is not.”

“It is forbidden to create a likeness of Allah's living creation,” replies Seamus. “You will know that the Arabic
sawara
, used for ‘creation of likenesses,' is the same word that is used nowadays for photography.”

She pauses to reflect on his remarks, and then looks at him as if intending to challenge his certainity, asking, “Don't tell me that photography is forbidden?”

Seamus, grinning, reads from his notes, and, cautious like a septuagenarian treading on slippery ground, replies, “According to the late Sheikh Muhammad Bakheet, a former Mufti of Egypt, photography is not forbidden, because, he says, ‘this art is no more than captivating a shade or a reflection by special technique, similar to what we see in mirrors.' What is not allowed is to ‘create a likeness which has no previous existence,' a likeness that might be construed as competing with Allah's creation. Statues, sculptures—these are forbidden. Unless they are meant to serve as toys.”

She gives serious thought to what he has just said, and then asks, “What are we to make of Dajaal's response?”

“He's organized a posse of men to stab Gudcur, who is a clansman of his and Bile's,” Seamus replies. “Why he has chosen to act in this contradictory way when it comes to the masks is beyond me.”

“We need Dajaal on our side,” Cambara says.

“If you want to know, Dajaal's hostility to the idea of my carving the eagles and chickens has, in part, precipitated my moving here from the apartment I share with Bile last night. And that is saying something.”

“Will talking to Dajaal be of any use?” she asks. “Has Dajaal bothered to quote an authority on the basis of which a Muslim is forbidden to carve, say, a mask in the likeness of an eagle or a chicken?”

“I doubt that he knows any authority to quote,” says Seamus.

“He does not even pray with any regularity.”

She takes a sip of her espresso, cold and bitter.

Seamus goes on, “I've never seen him say his devotions even once in all the time we've spent together, and we've spent many a sunup and many a sundown together. I've known him to be disciplined enough to keep his opinions about many matters to himself. He is so private, Bile and I do not know what he does after work.” A despairing look spreads itself on his face as he says, “Now this!”

“Just a thought.”

He looks for a long while at his fingers, stained, most likely with Superglue and other adhesives. He applies a clear liquid with an odor reminiscent of linseed oil, and then he rubs his hands together.

“I owe him thanks for all this,” she says, her hands gesticulating. “It can't have been easy to achieve what Dajaal has done. Such a strategist, especially if he has had a hand in staging the attack on Gudcur's redoubt, that drew him out of the property.”

“Now that I think of it,” Seamus says, his face lighting up with the flames of memory, “I remember Dajaal being in a state a few days ago after he and Bile had a long talk, in camera, so to speak. In all the years I've known the two of them and I've known them for donkey's years, neither of them wanted me in on their discussion. Then I didn't see Dajaal for a whole day, and when next he turned up, he was not alone. He had Kaahin, a former fellow officer in the now defunct National Army, in tow. Another in-camera huddle. I knew then that some sort of secret operation that would require renting one or two battlewagons and as many as a dozen highly trained fighters was being mounted. Later, I learned how much it would cost to pull it off. I only know of all this because I was the one who went to our money changer to pay off the men, none of whom I had ever seen.”

“Where did the funds come from?”

“Some benefactor from abroad. Otherwise, it is all hush-hush. Kiin is in the picture somewhere. It's all unclear to me.”

Cambara suspects that Arda, with help from Raxma, is up to her old tricks, funneling the funds in through an intermediary. Her head pounds with pain, as if the drilling coming from another room were boring into her, reducing her to someone with a brain needing to be overhauled.

“It distresses me that it has come to this.”

“Let's not despair. Talk to Bile. About Dajaal.”

“Let's find a way of somehow involving Dajaal in the production.”

“Talk to Bile; he'll know what to suggest better than I.”

“Do you think that having Bile talk to him may persuade him to come to our side of the fence? Or if he were to read the text, he would like it?”

“No idea.”

They fall silent, neither able to find anything to say. Gacal comes in to announce that Dajaal is waiting in the car for Cambara to join him, and when she does, she discovers that the engine is on, idling. She gets in, puts on her seat belt, and he reverses, then drives off speedily without a single word.

No sooner has Cambara fastened her seat belt and readied to start engaging Dajaal in a conversation about the masks in the play than he whips out his mobile phone and, calling some man by name, tells him that he and a guest are on their way and that he should meet the vehicle at the usual entrance; he won't have time to go to the apartment himself.

It is then that her itinerant eyes fall on two items with religious significance: a rosary and the word “Allah,” in Arabic, both hanging down prominently behind the rearview mirror. She stares at them, as though in a hypnotic state. At first she looks alternately bemused and baffled, and then she reasons with calmness that she is being facile in inferring Dajaal's religious inclination or lack thereof from two artifacts that may have come with the car whenever it was imported as a reconditioned vehicle from the Arabian Gulf, as many of the cars plying the roads in Mogadiscio are. Nor does she need reminding that she too has donned a body tent, the type of veil associated in the minds of Muslims with the most devout women, something she is not, yet she has worn it anyway.

It won't do her or her cause any good if she broaches the subject head-on when he appears not to be well disposed toward her. Who knows if he may relent in a day or so, perhaps after he has had a chance to read the text. She will have a word with Bile, who may agree to intercede with him. Moreover, is it not possible that Seamus may have got the wrong end of the stick? It is feasible to interpret Dajaal's position as that of making a theological point to an Irishman, something he does not need to do when speaking with her, a fellow Muslim, albeit secular leaning. In any case, she must try her utmost and without prejudice to get on the right side of Dajaal's goodwill. To bring this about, it is unwise to discuss the subject with him now, much less pick a quarrel with him over his objections to her use of the masks later. Dajaal deserves a heartfelt thank-you from her.

As she embarks on speaking his praises, she realizes how much pluck it will take to find the words with which to express not only her genuine intentions but also her ambiguities. Her mixed emotions stiffen her features, and she senses that whatever she has to say will not pass muster and that whatever phrases she lights on will sound either inadequate or too formal. Silence being no alternative, she settles on speaking and does so only after her attempt to make eye contact with him has failed.

She says, “I've meant to thank you for all your help, Dajaal. You've put your life and the lives of others on the line. Thank you.”

He is as brief in his response as he is self-contained in his reticence. “My pleasure.”

Silent, he gives his full attention to his driving, and he looks straight ahead, conscious, nonetheless, of her stare. If she is daring him to meet her gaze, then maybe the slight grin that forms and then disappears momentarily is his way of responding to it.

“You've set things in motion, with admirable results, managing something not short of a miracle: organizing the repossession of my family property without shedding a drop of blood. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” Then silence.

She falls despondently quiet, the faint echo of her voice replaying in her head. She feels as if she is in a free fall, the string attaching her to the parachute becoming so entangled that there is no chance of it opening. The intensity of her vulnerability, the unpredictable nature of her volatility surprises her as much as it shocks her.

The first to break the silence, Dajaal says, “I fear that Seamus may have misinformed you or worried you rather unnecessarily.”

“Please explain what you mean,” she says.

He obliges. “Maybe Seamus has misunderstood me.”

Cambara says nothing; waits.

“I have no objections to the use you are making of masks in
your
play,” he continues. “All I've said to him is that Islamic Courts folks might object to the use of carved images in theater and that if that were to happen we would run into trouble. Insurmountable trouble.”

“Have you ever seen any puppet theater yourself?”

“I have.”

“Not in this country?”

“No. In the former Soviet Union,” he says, adding, “when I was a student there, training as a military officer. A theater troupe from Ukraine came to perform for us. We also had the Guinean Ballet troupe perform, as they did here in Mogadiscio too, several years later. Both here and in Odessa—I am speaking of the ballet now—the audiences were shocked when the women performing in it bared their breasts in the final act. In Odessa, they gawked and asked for an encore. Here, in Mogadiscio, the audiences applauded. But then the courts were not much of a threat. Siyad Barre was in power then and he wouldn't have countenanced their objections. Things are different now. The Islamists have terrific clout and an armed militia, and cinema owners and TV producers do their bidding when they forbid the showing of a program or the airing of a broadcast.”

Cambara recalls that for generations, women in Africa have employed the baring of breasts not so much as art, as the Guinean Ballet is known to have done, but as a political forum, used in opposition to the male order of society, which is corrupt, inefficient, retrograde. But that is not where she wants their talk to go; so she brings it back into line, saying “Do you know anyone who might raise objections to my use of the wooden masks? Personally?”

“I haven't discussed the topic with anyone other than Seamus,” he says, “but I know the way things are here. All you need is one hardline Islamist quoting a verse from the Koran on so-called religious grounds, and you will find holier-than-thou crowds with placards gathering in front of the theater, picketing, and stoning the building or anyone entering it. Some self-described Muslim leader is bound to pass a fatwa on the head of the author, and a Mogadiscio businessman, eager to gain popularity and fame, will promise a sum of money in hundreds of U.S. dollars to anyone who will carry out the death sentence. In the meantime, the BBC Somali Service will interview the Muslim leader, the businessman in question, and the author of the puppet theater on their Friday program.”

Recalling her conversation with Seamus, she asks what he would do
if,
for whatever reason, someone were to object to the props as being graven. “In other words, on which side of the fence will you be if and when my life is under threat or if the hall in which I produce the play is firebombed?”

He acts as though he is impervious to her stare, which she has now trained on him. It's obvious not only that he is not oblivious to it but also that he is bothered, a little shaken.

“I'll have to give that some serious thought.”

“Fair enough.”

Neither speaks for a long time.

“You wouldn't say the images are un-Islamic?”

“Some people would,” he says.

“
You
wouldn't, would you?”

When he doesn't wish to commit himself to a position, a sudden sense of apprehension quietly seeps like an oil slick into unreachable and therefore uncleanable areas of her awareness, she feels disaffected. Why has she never considered that it may come to this? Which would she rather walk away from: her art or the family property, which is as good as recovered, as good as restored, and therefore all her own? She notices that Dajaal is slowing down, driving at funeral speed and looking now in the rearview mirror, now ahead, as if trying to spot someone.

Her voice meek, she says, “What a stark choice to make!”

Dajaal says, “I am aware of it, yes.”

Then both of them catch sight of an elderly man emerging from a huge, dilapidated building, moving in haste toward the vehicle, with his hands flailing excitedly. When the man gets closer, a smile of recognition spreads its wings on the old man's wrinkled face. Dajaal eases off, changing gears and braking, but he does not switch the engine off.

He says to the old man, “Please take this woman to Bile,” and to Cambara he says, “Ring me on my mobile when you want to be picked up, and I will do so. Pronto.”

He reverses without waving, and off he goes.

A little antsy, Cambara steps out of the vehicle affording herself the time to wave and then address her words of thanks in Dajaal's direction, although she is aware he won't hear them. Maybe she is doing it for the sake of form, given the presence of the old man, of whom she is now in pursuit.

Catching up with him, they walk in parallel past a metal gate and a desolate space, down a stairway into a cool, damp, and dark basement. She wonders where they are, maybe in a sort of cave with flaky walls and an otherworldly echo. Afraid, she stays close to him, as they pass puddles of water, provenance unclear. They walk toward human voices—women chattering noisily, children in playful pursuit of one another—but she cannot tell from where they are emanating, from up above or from another basement below. The old man is hell-bent on getting her to Bile's and she on not being left behind in this place, which is as damp as the bottom of a grave recently dug close to a swamp and emitting a god-awful smell, like Zaak's mouth soon after he has awoken.

The old man, perforce, takes it easy when they come to a slippery staircase, holding on to the side railing, which is rusty and wettish. She too is cautious, moderating her pace to match his, her shoed feet meeting a perilous clamminess. The old man says, “Careful,” when she trips, and sighs heavily when she stands on the tips of her toes, flapping about, until she grabs hold of the side railing in time before falling. It is a mystery to her how the old man can figure out where to go or what is happening to her without looking over his shoulders; it is as though he has eyes on his back.

She feels relieved when they emerge into an open space, a former parking lot with no cars now. They climb up a short stairway, past a courtyard with a row of potted flowers and walls covered with creepers, dark, green, and young: the leaves of passion fruit in full splendor.

They stop in front of a metal door, the old man hesitating to press the bell. As for Cambara, she is reading a verse on a plaque nailed to the lintel: “Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God.” Scarcely has she had the time to decide from which holy scripture it was taken than the old man pushes the door open and leaves as fast as someone running away from a crime scene does.

As soon as she walks, unescorted, into the apartment, a telling odor, ominous in its fierceness and rather irrepressible, hits Cambara in the face, overwhelming her senses. The smell takes her back to a memory in her distant past, and which she thinks of no reason to relive: a baby making a terrible mess, soiling its clothes with its own waste, and she, the mother of the child, cleaning it all up.

Feeling protective toward Bile, as soon as she has worked out the source of the odor before taking even one step further. She decides not to allow anyone else, including or rather especially the old man, to be privy to any of this, she closes the door behind her. When she tries to figure out what to do or how to attend to the smell, a recalcitrant thought, disturbing in its meaning, crosses her mind.

Then she approaches Bile, his eyes glazed over, soiled, the dominating image that comes to her one of a strong workhorse with weak knees. He is lying on his side, dissipated, with no more energy to expend on getting up, his left hand under his head, the right hand balled into a fist and stretched forward; both the back and the front of his trousers brown, most probably with his waste; one of his slippers off and the other half on. His right cheek is plastered with the thick deposit of dried yellow detritus probably stained with some partly digested food that the rest of his body, not agreeing with it, has rejected. It is obvious from his misted-over gaze that Bile does not even recognize her, but, as if needing to exonerate him of blame, she remembers that when they met, she was in an “elsewhere veil.” Now she is in a caftan, hair uncovered; he is in his apartment and is in an otherworldly state of mind, hardly capable of determining how come he has ended up adorning his clothes with his bodily discharges.

She does what she has done many times before as a mother. First she helps him to a half crouch, allowing him all the time in the world to stay on his knees, then assisting him to lean forward and against her before pulling him, very slowly, and gradually up and up and up into a sitting position on the couch. She minds neither the awfulness of the stench nor the fact that his vomit-and waste-stained cheek and his smudged trousers are rubbing against her body. After she has let him catch his constrained breath, she makes him lie on the couch on his back.

The sun entering the apartment falls on Bile's eyes, but they do not reflect light, only darkness, like that of a night of terrible sorrow. Even so, a distant smile traces his face.

No time to spare, Cambara moves speedily about the apartment and soon enough she finds the bathroom, where she notices an unusual mess: the sink blocked with debris, the toilet and the seat of the bidet edged with slurry, the paper off its holder, unfurled and lying on its side. She goes to the kitchen, fills a kettle with water, and turns the flame on. While the water is boiling, she goes back to the bathroom and runs the taps, discovering that there is hot water for a shower. A minute or so later, she comes out carrying a huge bath towel, a flannel bathrobe, and a bucket full of hot water. All this while, Bile is lost to the world. When she comes to do the preliminary cleansing before leading him into the bathroom for his eventual shower, he does not collaborate or show any resistance, nor does he open his eyes as she wipes his face clean with a flannel. She moves him to this side and then that side until she places the huge bath towel under him. Then she covers him with the bathrobe. She undoes his belt; he stirs, alerting her to his conscious state. But even though he does not push her away, she leaves the room to answer the kettle's singing, and make a pot of tea. She finds a tray and some honey.