Bella can’t think of what to say. When there is time and the opportunity presents itself, she will ask Salif to tell her what he knows about these things. Salif acts more grown-up than most youths his age; his father trained him that way. He is self-confident, and his self-regard is of a high quality.
Gunilla says, “I would very much love to see Salif and Dahaba. No rush, though. There is all the time in the world.”
“It’d be inappropriate to do so now.”
Gunilla agrees. “We’ll arrange to meet in due time.”
“Once the legal matters have been settled.”
Gunilla says, “Very wise. Just like Aar.”
“Take care. We’ll be in touch,” Bella says.
“We will indeed.”
12
Bella is exhausted when she returns home. She has an atrocious pain in the lower reaches of her pelvis, which, for want of a better explanation, she ascribes to her terrible posture as she drove back to Aar’s house from Gigiri, pitched forward as if that would somehow make her go faster. She parks the car and, stepping out, places one hand on her back, pressing it hard, and the other on her midriff, squeezing it. It doesn’t help. This, she guesses, is the price she pays for not taking good care of herself and not adequately resting for the past few days. She also ascribes some of it to the overwhelming grief over her loss, and the worry, and the exhaustion from all this travel, and the dislocation, and the determination not to display any signs of the stress to Valerie and Padmini. Finally, she blames all the driving around she has had to do looking for a camera store and then negotiating the price down, which in the end was not worth all the bother.
There is no denying too that her unceasing thoughts about the children and their continued presence in her mind and life have contributed to her general anxiety. Good as they have been with her, she senses a chasm in her knowledge about them. They have not yet truly tried her patience, but in time, she knows, they will. The gap between what she knows about them and the things she has yet to know reminds her of something Aar said to her about Somalis and their relationship to their language. Somali remained an oral language for a long time, acquiring a written form using Roman script only toward the end of 1972. Aar argued that those who had known the language only in its spoken form felt a great disconnect between the tongue they spoke and the one they were beginning to learn to write. Bella perceives such a lack in what she knows about the children, but she can’t quite identify what she is missing. She also has few close friends here to provide her and the children with additional support and someone to fall back on. It would be a different story in Rome, where she has a host of old friends. Still, meeting Gunilla, whom she not only likes but also finds impressively competent, has cheered her. The woman knows her way around Nairobi, knows how things work here. She is sure to cultivate Gunilla’s friendship, in whom she sees a link with Aar, someone both of them loved.
Bella brings in the bags of groceries she has bought but leaves the carryall containing Aar’s personal effects in the trunk of the car when she parks. Before bringing them in, she wants to know what the state of affairs is here.
She remembers she has no key and rings the bell at the same time as she knocks hard with her knuckles on the solid wooden door. But there is no answer. A worried second later, she thinks she should have called from the shopping mall to alert them when to expect her. Then her instinct leads her to lean heavily on the door and turn the handle in an instant of optimism. And the door opens. Now all sorts of worries invade her mind: Have they forgotten to lock it in the first place? Have burglars broken the door or somehow found their way in? And given that there is no one downstairs, she allows other fears to prey on her thinking until she hears the soft whirring of the fan of a computer coming from upstairs and then an instant later a faint human humming, most likely Dahaba singing along with one of her favorite tunes.
Laden with the shopping, she closes the door gently, not wanting to frighten Dahaba. In the kitchen, her gaze falls on a heap of dishes, saucepans, and utensils piled up in the sink, still waiting to be washed. Evidently neither Valerie nor Padmini helped clean up the breakfast mess before leaving — unless they are still upstairs with Dahaba or Salif. Bella’s mind now retrieves a memory pertinent to the occasion: Aar saying he had three children to look after.
She opens the fridge, in which there are half-eaten packets of sweets and a couple of cans of half-drunk soft drinks. Another empty can is abandoned on the windowsill. She puts away the groceries, pours herself a glass of water, and sits at the kitchen table, which is equally messy. After a couple of sips, she gets up and empties the fridge of the abandoned items, wipes the surface of the kitchen table, and discards the empty can. Then she sits back down, feeling instantly less exhausted. She calls out to Salif and Dahaba, and when they welcome her back, she suggests they come down and help her prepare a light midday meal.
As Bella seasons the chicken she has brought, Dahaba is the first to speak as she shows off a silver bracelet her mum bought for her. “Isn’t this the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever seen, made, of all places, in Mogadiscio?”
“Made in Mogadiscio?” questions Bella.
Dahaba assures her that the Indian jeweler who sold it to them swore it was handmade in Tangaani, an arts-and-crafts place in Mogadiscio. Excited, Dahaba jumps around in joy.
Bella corrects the place name. “Shangaani in Mogadiscio.”
Because Salif remains silent, Bella asks, “And you?”
He sounds dismissive of the whole exercise, and then, when least expected, he says, “Same boring stuff, as always. You are unhappy, you are bored, Mum buys you a present. You see, I didn’t want to ask her, or either of them for that matter, questions about their life, but I hoped they would bring me into their life, what it is like to be where they are, what makes the two of them tick. What do you get? Presents. A new iPhone, if you want.”
Bella can’t think of what to say so she doesn’t even try to reason with him, maybe because he has a point, his point, the point of a teenager who meets his mum and who wants to be no longer thought of as a child.
“And he was rude to Mum,” Dahaba says.
Bella asks, “Rude? Why rude? How rude?”
“She gave him cash,” Dahaba says, “since Salif wouldn’t accept a present from her. And he threw the money back at her, in full view of everyone.”
“Then what happened?”
“We left and took a taxi home.”
Bella feels powerless to do anything about what happened and she is at a loss for words. And of course, she understands that Salif was hurt and had the right to feel that way. She senses the best thing to do is to leave things the way they are and revisit them another time. And with no one speaking, Bella deliberately lets the subdued manner dominate, convinced that something of monumental significance has occurred during her absence.
Dahaba says, “It was just terrible.”
Salif, surprising Bella, comes to the rescue. He goes over to where Dahaba is standing and he hugs her to him and he says, “Nothing to worry about. I told her she is welcome to visit whenever she pleases, didn’t I?”