Gunilla says, “We’ll miss him. I loved him.”
What Bella suspected has become obvious. She remembers back to that last time in Istanbul with Aar — his aura of happiness, the two necklaces he purchased — one for her and the identical one, she thought then, for Dahaba, but now she knows for sure. He behaved like a teenager with a secret to treasure, and now she knows what it was.
Immaculata is still standing in the half-open doorway. She wants to know if either of them would like tea, coffee, or water.
“Coffee, Immaculata, and thanks,” Bella says.
Gunilla says, “Same for me and some water too.”
Gunilla closes the door behind the tea girl for privacy. An instant of indecision wrinkles her brow, and then her features relax.
Bella knows that as one of the most senior of the UN staff here Gunilla would be privy to a great deal of what goes on in the upper-level bureaucracy. But it is of private matters that Gunilla now speaks. “I believe I was the last person he spoke to,” she says. “He rang me from his apartment complex to confirm that he would be on the UN OCHA flight, and we agreed that I would pick him up and that he would spend the night at my place. This was not always the case. Often his driver would fetch him and then he would come straight to the office or go home and report for duty the following day.”
“What did he sound like when he called?” Bella asks.
“On edge.”
“What was the reason?”
Gunilla tells her about the death threat and the visit from the security team, and Aar’s suspicions and subsequent change of plans.
“Why did he make that detour to his office?” asks Bella.
“I don’t know,” Gunilla says. “Maybe he felt he was a marked man. He knew he would be asking for a transfer to Nairobi immediately after he flew back. Knowing he wouldn’t be back, maybe he wanted to get his things.”
While Gunilla rummages through a filing cabinet, Bella hears some humming in her ears. The humming goes on long enough to worry her. And then she has a momentary headache, her vision blurs. When the humming clears and she can see better, she starts to pay attention to what Gunilla is saying to her.
Gunilla apologizes. “I’m sorry,” she says, “but I need to have you fill in some forms. Are you up to it? I can help you, if you like. That way it will be quicker.”
Bella hesitates.
“Why don’t we start with you?” Gunilla says.
“How do you mean, start with me?”
“For starters, did you bring along all the forms of identification you need to fill in the insurance forms and collect his personal effects?”
Bella provides these. Gunilla scrutinizes the documents, and when their eyes meet, she smiles a little. Then she inspects the notarized copy of Aar’s will. Gunilla opens it page by page to study it, checking it closely with her eyes and then feeling the stamped bottom corner, as if examining for its authenticity. When Bella asks her if the version of Aar’s will that she has now submitted and that nominates her as his executor is the most recent and therefore the valid one, the Swede checks it against the copies of the documents that are on file.
Then Gunilla reads part of the will out loud, pointing especially to Aar and Valerie’s “out of community of property marriage in England.” She consults the will on file against the one Bella has brought along: same working, same provisions, same signatures, including Fatima’s and Mahdi’s. “Yes,” she says, “I met them even before I met Salif and Dahaba.”
Gunilla and Bella now hear a gentle knock on the door and Immaculata enters. A tray on which there are glasses of water and coffee precedes the tea girl into the room. When Immaculata has set the tray down on the low table, Gunilla says, “Thank you, that is all for now.”
When the young woman has left, Gunilla pours out two cups and asks if Bella takes milk or sugar. Bella shakes her head no and then, nodding and mouthing the word “Thanks,” receives the cup with both hands. She waits until Gunilla’s cup is poured before she takes a sip.
At last they get to the final form. “This one is difficult,” says Gunilla. “It gives you the right to receive his personal effects.”
Try as she might, Bella can exercise no more self-restraint. And Gunilla joins her in weeping. Eventually, she pulls herself together and says, “How about I put the questions to you and I write down what you say?”
It is easy for Bella to make room in her heart for Gunilla.
The questions are easy to answer: date of birth, place of birth, current nationality, profession, address, marital status, Bella’s relationship with the deceased, date and place of death, date and place of burial.
These last questions give Bella an occasion to ask some of her own, questions she has been dreading and yearning to ask. “What do you know about how he died?” she asks.
“According to one of the survivors brought to a Nairobi hospital for his serious wounds that proved to be fatal,” says Gunilla, “Aar is believed to have died immediately from a bullet that penetrated his heart. He was hit, execution style. And according to unconfirmed reports in the Mogadiscio press, he knew the man who struck him, the Shabaab mole working in the UN office with him who not only knew him but also had threatened him.”
“And his burial,” Bella asks, repeating the version she has read in the papers.
Gunilla replies, “The explosion soon after the Shabaab mole shot him fragmented not only his body but also the bodies of several other victims who could not even be identified.”
“Do we have any idea if the forensics folks know if his body suffered a second, more severe trauma following the latter explosion?” Bella says.
“We’re waiting for the FBI report.”
“How is it that the FBI is involved?”
“Because some Americans were among the dead,” explains Gunilla, “and in any case, there are no Somali forensics teams available — you know how things are in that country better than I do.”
All of a sudden, Gunilla catches Bella’s eyes and this time her burst of emotion becomes uncontainable. Bella is equally in a delicate state, and although she finds it hard to desist from joining Gunilla, she doesn’t, telling herself that she has done enough weeping. Gunilla says, “I miss him terribly.”
“We all do,” Bella says.
“How are Salif and Dahaba faring?” Gunilla asks.
“It’s been difficult, but they are strong and lovely.”
“I met them twice, the first time on a camping trip.”
Bella says, “Their mother has been visiting. We met two nights ago for dinner — she and Padmini, her partner, and I — and she is now with Salif and Dahaba.”
“Since Valerie and Aar married out of community of property, the law is clear, from what I gather,” says Gunilla. “I’ve consulted a UN colleague who is British. Therefore, you have no worries there, legally speaking. But if the children were to declare strong loyalties and if she filed her papers here in Kenya, then you have some untidiness to deal with. Even so, the deciding judge must take her situation — that of being an absent mother for years — into account. Any idea how likely it is for the children to declare loyalty to her?”
“I doubt it, from the little I know since getting here.”
“And then, of course, it depends on what your intentions are.”
“What do you mean, what my intentions are?”
“Are you willing to take on the responsibility of parenting them? You are Aar’s executor of his will, and as long as they are with you, there is nothing to worry about.”