Knots (7 page)

Cambara looks up at the bulb overhead, burning.

Zaak follows her eyes, nods several times, and then offers an explanation. “The supply of electricity for this—the second phase—originates from a small two-star hotel which generates its own power. The manager has a little ice-making factory. We tap into it.”

“How do you do that?”

“I make underhand payments to his workers,” he says, pleased with his graft. “The water heater, my bedroom, and this section of the living room are connected to this supplier. I pay five dollars a month for tapping into the system.”

“And to cook?”

“I don't cook,” he says, as if proud of it.

Taken slightly aback because of the fierceness of his assertion, she makes as if to flatter him. She says, “Surely you've prepared the dinner you're offering me? If offered, I would eat
your
Bolognese, I am so ravenous.”

“My dear, I couldn't bear the pressure you place on anyone who deigns to present you with the food they have cooked for you,” he says. “You once described the sauce I prepared as looking like bird turd and tasting like chop suitable for a dog.”

She does not remember saying that to his face, but this sounds like something she might have said to her mother over the phone, and he might have been eavesdropping on her long-distance conversation with her. It would be very like him to have done that. No matter, his remarks do not produce the result he may have expected, even though they are acerbic, and he delivers them coolly, as though he has rehearsed them with the intention of hurting her; the keenness of his observation seems to dull against her skin, which feels indifferent to its scathing maliciousness. She stares at him long and hard, maybe in an attempt to think of badinage of equal incisiveness. Alas, she cannot.

He goes on. “I've seen you terrorize chefs.”

“What're you talking about?”

“Haven't I seen you turn your nose up at good food, lovingly and humbly served to you?”

“I don't recall ever making unfriendly remarks about your cooking,” she says, “never to your face, anyway.”

“Now we're talking.”

He stares back at her in silence, his eyes reddening and his once-over smirking taking a more pronounced shape. He does not have to speak; his look says it all, in fact more than she can take at present or dare to cope with. This is the closest the two of them have ever come to sparring openly. If they have resorted to playing a power game—something they have never done before—then one of them has to concede defeat. There were the days when he avoided confrontations and withdrew into the tight-lipped taciturnity of equivocation, worried of what Arda might say or do to him. He was aware of his beginnings: that if it had not been for Arda, the likelihood of landing as many chances as he had under her patronage would have been either wholly nonexistent or minimal. Perhaps now that he is hanging on to the lowest rung of the ladder, he can't be bothered.

Like a hound that has tasted blood and is closing in for the kill, he says, “Time you grew up, time you began to live in the real world.”

She feels her larynx seizing up, with her vocal cords failing to produce the slightest sound. However, she is still capable of processing the thoughts that her memory is transmitting. She thinks that when relationships between two persons who once thought they were intimate undergo major changes brought about by the presence or absence of sex that involve one party or both, the aggrieved one attacks the other with uninhibited animosity. She has been a victim of these types of assaults before—Wardi and now Zaak. She is alert to the contradictions and the unfairness of such reactions. Nonetheless, she understands where Zaak's animosity comes from. Then she imagines herself in the body of an elephant, which puts the animal's unparalleled strength into the equation; better still, given his physical shape, she likens herself to a sumo wrestler who lifts a challenger and drops him with accomplished flair. (Cambara is indebted to Arda, who is fond of comparing the strength of women to that of an elephant, which seldom makes full use of it, either because it does not know the extent of it and what it can achieve employing it or because its generous heart requires that it give more than it will ever receive in return.)

He resumes, “Time I welcomed you to the real world.”

“As if I live in a world of my own manufacture.”

“You lie to yourself; that's your problem.”

“How dare you speak to me in that tone of voice?”

His silence serves as salt on her open wound.

“Tell me, why have you never spoken of this?”

“Because I've had no opportunity to do so.”

“Why today?”

Zaak does not say anything.

“Why choose the very first day of my arrival in the city? Is it because you are aware that I am wholly reliant on you for guidance and for protection? Is that how to treat a guest?”

“I've been a guest all my life,” Zaak says.

“Not in our house, you weren't.”

“How would you know?”

She hurts deeply, her inside aching. “My mother raised you as if you were of her own flesh and blood.”

“You're saying it yourself!”

“What? What have I said?”

“As if I were of her own flesh and blood, which I was not. You knew it and exploited it every way you could; she knew it and made a point of reminding me whenever I stepped out of line.” He throws the words at her like darts on a dartboard.

“Born a coward, you'll remain one,” she says.

She tries to recall a single instance in all the time the two of them lived together—as children raised in the same household or as a couple pretending to be man and wife—when she behaved as uncivilly toward him as he is doing right now. It doesn't surprise her that she cannot find any.

No doubt, she kept him at bay, refusing to share “intimacies” with him. Blame it on Arda for setting the terms. She believes she herself was impeccable in her dealings with him, albeit within the parameters of the contract with Arda and then eventually with him. As for the time spent together in their younger years, there is the matter of her excessive naughtiness. Her mother tried and failed to moderate her wildness or to make her behave as one might expect of a girl of her background. Zaak was such a dunce, only good enough to receive the school's booby prizes; she knew he would not amount to much.

“I want to move out,” she shouts. “Right now.”

“Go right ahead,” he says. “Who is stopping you?”

Silent but not rueful, she stares at him in fury.

“Where will you go to if you leave?”

“A hotel.”

“Do you know of one?”

“I do.”

Kiin's Hotel Maanta, run by Raxma's friend.

“Do you know how to get there?”

This is a taunt to his tone of triumph, and both know it. She does not respond to it, not only because she has no idea where Hotel Maanta is in relation to where she is but also because she is peering into the ugly face of defeat. Her eyes bore deep into his: how she hates him. When she finally hits the concrete reality of so much unyielding contempt in his come-on leering, she says, her voice sounding like that of an exhausted boxer not returning the licks raining on him, “I still don't want to be here.”

“Wise up, woman,” he says.

“Don't talk to me in that uppity tone.”

“I'll talk as I please when I please,” he retorts.

She repeats “I should've known” several times. Then she lapses into the dejected silence of the routed, her tiredness suddenly evident all over her body, the look in her eyes dimming, her features twisted into a grimace. She consoles herself, all the same, that come tomorrow she will fight back once she has studied the lay of the land, and will have fallen back on her resolve to recover her dignity.

“You won't want to be anywhere but here and with me, if you know what's good for you.”

“I thought I lived in a world of my manufacture?”

“You do.”

“One in which I lie to myself?”

“You do.”

“In which case I know what is good for me.”

“So, what or who is good for you?”

“Neither you nor your place is good for me.”

“Here's what I will not do,” he says, bossing her.

“What?

“I will not allow you to compromise your safety.”

“Why should my safety matter to you?”

“It matters to your mother,” he says.

“And why does my mother matter to you?”

“Your mother thinks of me as your host.”

“And so?”

“I don't want her to be disappointed in me.”

“My safety, my foot!”

He disregards her fury with a shrug and says, “If you wise up, you will not embark on a foolish adventure into the dark unknown of Mogadiscio's dangers. You will not want to risk your life just to prove a silly point. Be under my roof; be my guest; be as comfortable as you can, despite the adverse circumstances. Consider your safety. If I were you, I would put up with the discomforts that are one with your safety. Tomorrow, I will be more than willing to drive you anywhere you like until you find a good and clean enough hotel, which will serve you quality food and which will meet your approval. And the Lord knows there is no such place in this whole city.”

She is not certain if he intends to redeem himself when he advises her not to do anything rash, or if what he wants is to heap further humiliation on her head. Who would have thought that Zaak had it in him to harbor so much resentment, keep so much venom bottled up inside him for so many years? Who would have imagined that he would spring it all on her at the least expected moment? Maybe it was naive to assume that Zaak would remain forever beholden to every member of her family. She is confident that if push comes to shove, she will be able, eventually, to square up to Zaak's comeuppance and will relish the prospect of proving herself worthy of her calling as a woman of high resolve, an actor of tremendous potential. What she can't decide is how much bearing all this will have on her. She says, “Promise to tell me why you are doing this one day. For my own edification.”

“Wardi has been in touch,” he says.

She says, “That is of no concern to me.”

“I think it is,” Zaak assures her.

“What is the relevance?”

“I've heard his side of the story.”

“So what?”

“What's yours?”

He moves as though he is preparing to launch into another of his skirmishes, but she raises her right arm in time calmly to stop him from saying anything. When she thinks she has imposed her way on him, she touches her fingers to her lips, as if to seal the contract with the silence that is about to become her destiny. She stands stock still, wincing, her arms akimbo, in the likeness of a bird readying to take off. She makes as if to depart.

Then she says, “Good day to you.”

“Wait, don't go yet,” he says.

Cambara goes to her upstairs room to think things over.

How can she cure her grief in the briny condiments of her tears when her secondary fury—directed at Zaak, and consequent upon his churlishness—is so overwhelming that her primary anger at Wardi for what he has done pales in comparison? Truth is, she will at no point question the wisdom of coming to Mogadiscio, nor will she regret it. However, what course of action must she take to undo Zaak's misdeed?

She believes that whatever else she does, she will not want to allow her rage to go on a rampage and thereby ruin her chances of success, compelling her to give in to the allure of remorse. There is no sense in admitting defeat hastily either, especially to losers like Zaak and Wardi, or in throwing her hands up in the air in despair. She is determined not to permit Zaak's declared animosity to dampen her newfound bravado, which is the result partly of her having beaten Wardi in his dastardly game and partly of her deciding to come home, so that among other things she can reclaim her family property.

She wishes she had Raxma close by or had the opportunity to ring her up right away so she could bring her up to speed about Zaak's inappropriate comportment. Of all the people she knows and with whom she might discuss such a sensitive topic, Raxma is the one whom she trusts fully and whom she thinks might advise her on the best approach to extricating herself from the complex tangle of relational webs—as intricate as they are destructive—into which Zaak has led her unawares. Cambara replays in her mind Raxma's emotional valediction, spoken as they hugged each other good-bye at the Toronto airport, to which Raxma had given her a lift. Raxma had promised that she would not give up her attempt to locate someone who might have functioning phone numbers for Hotel Maanta, owned and run by Kiin, a very close friend of hers. However, when Cambara called her from Nairobi, Raxma had been sorry to report that the two numbers she had often used to reach Kiin might have become faulty, because they had been permanently busy. She urged Cambara to set her mind at rest, though. She was very optimistic that in a couple of days she would call her with Kiin's coordinates because she was continually ringing the number she had for Kiin as well as trying to contact some of her business associates in Abu Dhabi who might help. If, in the meantime, Cambara obtained a local SIM card, then it would be worth her while to try the numbers herself. Raxma, who was more familiar with matters Somali, in that she had kept abreast of political events in the country from which she had been away a mere decade, as compared to Cambara, who had been away for almost two decades, explained that there were some telephone network providers based in Mogadiscio with no international connectivity. Alternately, Cambara could call her once she was connected and had her own number and, if there was need for her to make a reverse charge, then Raxma would place the return call immediately.

Now she remembers, with charged emotion, Raxma's words of farewell. “We are here for you, our darling, you can rely on us,” Raxma assured her. “You want to be flown out at half a day's notice to Nairobi or anywhere else, let me know. Keep in touch—that is very important.”

Cambara counts herself lucky in many instances. Lucky that, to date, the world has been kind to her by offering her never-ending possibilities. Lucky that she has Raxma, who, short of acting like an older sister, has taken on a surfeit of tasks and helped out as her most trustworthy ally when the Zaak or Wardi affairs were difficult. Lucky that Arda, despite her occasional bloody-mindedness in the roughshod manner in which she deals with her daughter's crisis-ridden liaisons, is one with her unceasing love and her untiring care as her mother. Indeed, if there was any time in her life when Cambara could very well benefit from the support of someone to advise her on matters highly personal, a friend to whose counsel she would pay heed, then today is the day.

Cambara was always impressed that Raxma's approach to all the affairs of the heart was, to a large degree, informed by the pragmatic sense of a mother who has had to raise a set of twins when her irresponsible husband abandoned her for a younger woman. A good, patient listener with a long-term outlook, Raxma had a canny way of knowing when the right time to intervene had dawned and how to go about doing so, which words to use and what to suggest, seldom giving in to the schmaltzy side of an argument. Her every action was deliberate, calculated to improve on what was there before she came on the scene, her counsel tailored to be of advantage when or if similar situations arose in the future. Raxma, trained as a medical doctor in Odessa, was turned down by the Canadian Medical Association when she applied for a license to practice in Canada. Because she would have had to requalify, needing no less than three years to graduate, she and her husband agreed that she would give up her profession for the sake of their school-going set of twins, which she did reluctantly.

Her former husband, on the other hand, had marketable qualifications: an undergraduate degree in gynecology, in addition to a postdoctoral in a related subject from Germany. He became one of the few Somalis to whom the CMA granted a license, and he was in high demand, serving as a consultant to two hospitals. Well paid and highly sought after as he was, it was not long before world bodies with UN backing, including WHO, recruited him for assignments here and there, eventually posting him to the Indian subcontinent as its representative. By then, his professional success and her apparent lack of self-fulfillment became the third party in their lives, which he gradually opted out of. He started having affairs, first with the women working with him as assistants and then zeroing in on one of them as his mistress.

On discovering these shenanigans, she went about her business in a mature style, neither letting on that she knew about his infidelity nor displaying any signs of tension or unease in their day-to-day intercourse. She put the two boys in a boarding school and then, thanks to a lawyer, put the screws to her wayward husband, making him agree to a large one-time alimony payment and, in the bargain, taking possession of their five-bedroom family house. Then, with the money in the bank, topped off with a guaranteed loan, she set up an import-export business with an office she ran from home and, when necessary, traveled back and forth between the various cities she had to get to, mostly in the Arabian Gulf. Rarely, however, did she spend more than two consecutive weekends away from Toronto, making certain she was available for her two sons, especially when they were younger. She brought her elderly mother and a younger half sister, almost Cambara's age, to fill in for her in the event she did not get back in time. Now that both boys were at universities—one at Guelph, the other at McGill—the responsibility of looking after their mother and running the house fell to her younger sister. In addition to her important role in their household, Raxma remains the main bedrock to a community of Somali women, among whom Cambara was proud to be one.

The two women first met barely a month after Cambara had set up a makeup studio with seed money from her mother, following two years of apprenticeship at another one similar in conception but different in its clientele. Cambara intended hers to appeal to the up-and-coming young black professional classes, in particular the women, who, as a group, were conscious about their appearance and wanted to “improve” the flow, ebb, and texture of their hair. Many of these women, being of an independent cast of mind, were more likely to be single, even if they were of the view that the reconstructed men with whom they might be prepared to set up a life and a home were seldom easy to come across. Because of the particularity of their status, the women spent a lot of money to look good.

The paint on the inside walls was still fresh, the patrons rare, the business lean, when one afternoon Raxma walked in, not so much to pay for the services of a makeup artist as talk. How she talked, as if at the touch of a button, about the plans she had the moment Cambara had seated her at a chair and, wrapping a white cloth around her front, asked, “And what have we got here?” For one thing, Cambara did not expect Raxma to answer the question, which to her was another way of saying “What can I do for you?” or “How would you like me to be of service to you?” For another, she was equally intrigued, once the flood of words suffused with charged emotion sluiced out of the new client, when, by way of introduction, she presented herself as “Raxma” and mentioned a friend of hers and Cambara's, a name that rang no bell in the memory of her listener. Prompted by Cambara, Raxma talked not as if she were sad or enraged, not at all; she spoke as if she were talking into a Dictaphone from which someone else would transcribe her chatter into decipherable text. Even so, she did not pass up the opportunity and therefore spoke quite openly to Cambara about her agitated state of mind, as if they were old friends. Raxma explained that she had just discovered that her husband of many years had been cheating on her with one of his assistants at the hospital where he worked as a consultant. The expression on Raxma's face, as she talked, seemed snarled up into a sudden tangle of indefinable emotions. Moreover, her wild gestures, now that Cambara had meanwhile removed the cloth from around her and freed Raxma's hands to gesticulate liberally, alerted Cambara to a deep hurt. This set Cambara's mind to do what she could to hearten Raxma, at least gladden her day.

Remaining inside but not drawing the curtains, Cambara put up the “Closed” sign and waved away a couple of potential customers. Face to face with Raxma, she listened some more as her newfound friend elaborated on the agonized articulation of her suffering. Half an hour later, they left the studio and together—with Raxma still talking and Cambara attentively listening—went to a café where Cambara was a regular; sat in a corner, away from all the others; asked for tea, coffee, and cream; and chatted. They remained there until the lights came on, had a light dinner, and then drove in their respective cars to Cambara's apartment, where they had more drinks.

Raxma rang her two boys, addressing them by their pet names, into which she put as much affection as she could into each of the syllables they comprised. It was clear that the two boys were the world to her and that she would not do anything to harm them, including denying them the filial right to live together with both parents. Before ringing off, she suggested, since she was coming home late, that they order a pizza and pay for it from the cash kitty. They were very happy to do that. Of course, she knew they would watch TV all night, if they could, and not, as they promised, do their homework. When she returned from speaking to her two boys on the phone, Raxma was saying “Good riddance to bad rubbish” in the improvisatory manner of an actor rehearsing a part for the first time.

Hesitant to ask what Raxma meant, Cambara looked away, obviously pretending that she did not hear anything. Raxma hung her head in pensive silence, narrowing her eyes into slits of utter concentration. Apparently, she had made a snap decision in the instant between the time she suggested that the boys order a pizza and the minute she got back into the living room with Cambara. Raxma resolved to send the boys off to boarding school, and she shared her impulsive choice with Cambara.

“What will you do with the time and freedom that you earn from this?” Cambara asked.

Raxma said, “Do you know a lawyer?”

As luck had it, Cambara had a lawyer friend, a neighbor she had known for a number of years. Mauritanian-born Maimouna was a diehard feminist who had experience as a litigator for the cause of women in the Canadian courts. A powerhouse, Maimouna was dedicated, loyal to the wisdom attributed to Simone Weil that if there is a hideous crime in modern society, it is repressive justice against women. She saw her principal role as a fighter for women's causes, especially the Muslim wives who often had a raw deal in Canada. A patron of the studio and someone she had known for much longer, Maimouna frequently dropped in on Cambara both at work and at home.

“When would you like to meet a lawyer?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Would you like me to present you to one?”

“Yes, soon, and preferably a woman.”

“Consider it done,” Cambara said.

“Then I will take him to the cleaners.”

“After which?”

“If successful, then I'll work toward settling on an occupation,” Raxma said. “The idea of getting into the import-export business appeals to me. I will have to see how much money I am able to raise from taking someone I know to the cleaners.”

She did not find it curious or annoying that Raxma never, ever mentioned her husband by name—something, Cambara knew, Somali women who were displeased with their spouses tended to do as a way of self-distancing. Such women referred to their spouse only in the third person, as “he” or “him,” without once allowing his name to pass or, rather, sully their lips.

A phone call half an hour later sufficed to get Maimouna to come to Cambara's apartment for a chat and a bit of salad, and before midnight, the lawyer agreed to represent Raxma. All told, it took about nine months to set a date for the preliminary hearing of the case and less than a year for the couple to reach an out-of-court settlement. In the hiatus, Cambara saw a lot of Raxma and her two boys, spending a lot of her free time with them or their mother. All four of them would drive to Ottawa in one vehicle and visit Arda on long weekends. As it turned out, Raxma was the only person other than Arda who was privy to Cambara's true thinking about becoming a spouse to Zaak. It was during these early days that Cambara filled her in on what was happening and Raxma chose to stay protectively in the background, reserving the right to remain circumspect until Zaak's arrival in Toronto. She displayed untiring loyalty to Cambara and held her hand all through her ordeals. When it came her turn to help Cambara, whose life was upended, Raxma stepped in and provided companionship and other forms of encouragement to speed her recovery. She pronounced her catchphrase—“Good riddance to bad rubbish”—on the day Cambara booted out Zaak. Then Raxma filled a designer's clay pot with water, and, to the accompaniment of ululation and loud drumming, Cambara, at her behest, took a stick to it, breaking it, so that the water, now set free, might flow out, a symbolic enactment of a woman's release from eternal bondage. They had a weeklong party, together celebrating their status, two women rejoicing their newly enfranchised respective conditions, with Raxma decidedly backdating the coming of her freedom, because it was time, she argued, that she commemorated the event with a reinvigorated sense of accumulated joy.