Valerie takes her handbag and heads for the door.
Padmini asks again, “Where are you going, love?”
“To the bar in the hotel to have a stiff drink.”
“Isn’t it a little early in the day?”
“You are most welcome to join me,” says Valerie.
She closes the door behind her and runs down the flights of steps, not pausing until she takes a seat in the bar. Her back is to the wall as she waits for someone to take her order and watches men and women coming and going, white-shirted, khaki-trousered, well-primed specimens every one of them. How Valerie hates them; they remind her of her father.
A waiter sporting a well-tended hairdo, yellow lips, and a nervous smile asks, “Anything, madam?” He smells of Lifebuoy soap.
“Two whiskies, three tots in each, plenty of ice on the side, and two glasses of water, please.” She adds, “My friend is joining me shortly,” even though she knows this is untrue. She will drink everything, just as she has done every day for the past few days in secret binges Padmini has not detected.
“Yes, madam,” he assures her.
“We can put the drinks bill on the room, right?”
The waiter leans down to whisper as if he were sharing a confidence with her — how his body smells, despite the Lifebuoy, she thinks. “I’m sorry, madam, cash up front. That is the hotel policy for hard liquor.”
“You go and get it,” she says.
“Cash up front, as I’ve just said, madam.”
Valerie can’t decide with whom she is angrier, the waiter, Gunilla, Bella, or the children, the multiple sources of her troubles. And to top it all off, she discovers that her wallet is bereft of cash. Enough. She is sober still, sober enough to decide she won’t be bullied by a Kenyan smelling of soap.
When she gets back to the room, Padmini is reading and doesn’t even bother to look up from her book, pretending she hasn’t noticed Valerie’s return. It is broad daylight, but Valerie gets under the covers and, weighed down with depression, goes straight to sleep.
—
Qamar and Salif are lying side by side on the bed with their shoes on, their heads on huge cushions, passing a cigarette back and forth. The windows are wide open and the two ceiling fans are doggedly running, producing scant air. Through the wall, they can hear the sounds of Zubair and Dahaba shrieking with laughter as they play computer games. Salif’s phone rings.
“Are you having a good time, darling?” Bella asks.
“Yes, Auntie, we are, thanks.” Indeed, they have been having a splendid visit, eating too much chocolate, smoking, gossiping about their friends, and taking turns telling tall tales to one another. Salif is aware that Dahaba is stiff with worry about their mother’s unscrupulousness. But he will assure Dahaba, when they are alone in their house later, that he knows a lot more than his mum does about the existing will, his father having confided this to him. Their father was more worried about the legion of his so-called Somali relatives who, like vultures, would descend to make their clan-based claim on his children and Bella’s inheritance were he to die without a will. This is why the will names Bella, his closest living blood relative, as their legal guardian.
“Will you be ready if I come to pick you up in half an hour?” asks Bella.
“Is it okay if you come in an hour instead?”
“Yes, it is. See you in an hour.” And Bella hangs up.
“I’ve been wondering,” Qamar says, trailing off.
Salif teases. “Keep going; keep wondering.”
Qamar asks, “How binding is the will of a dead person?”
Qamar has probably spoken to Dahaba, who is understandably worried about their mother’s talking the way she did about trusts, with Bella seemingly unaware of her machinations. He can imagine why Dahaba would want to know if their father’s will would protect them.
“Wills are more than a word given, they are written and signed in the presence of witnesses,” says Salif. “And they are binding. Otherwise, not honoring them might create avoidable frictions within family units, and nobody wants frictions.”
Qamar draws long on the cigarette and waits for him to continue speaking. She holds the cigarette away from her face until he passes her the ashtray. Then she brushes the ash off and passes the cigarette back to him.
Salif takes a puff, and as he blows rings of smoke out, he thinks about cremations and what the Zoroastrians do: construct a raised structure on which the recently dead is exposed to scavenging birds. He cannot determine which is worse: to be interred in the ground, cremated, or become food for scavenging birds.
Qamar says, after having a toke on the cigarette, “How do you know all this, about the enforceability of wills, I mean?”
Salif replies, “My dad explained it to me.”
“Why would he tell you that sort of thing?”
“It is as if he knew that our mum would one day turn up and make unenforceable claims. So he warned me about it and said to rely only on Bella, whom he would make our legal guardian in the event he preceded her.”
“My dad never spoke about this type of thing to me.”
“Maybe your situation is different and he needn’t do that.”
“Or maybe…”
“You see, Dad hoped I’d become a lawyer,” says Salif.
Salif receives the cigarette now that it is his turn to have a puff, then closes his eyes after drawing on it, holding the smoke in his mouth and releasing it gently.
“I think your mum has her madcap ideas,” says Qamar.
Salif has a hungry long draw on the cigarette for a second time before passing it to Qamar. And then he feasts his eyes on the well-presented series of photos of a young and an old Nina Simone and of Miles Davis playing a gig in a dive in Japan. Salif prefers African music in all its forms to American or European music. He has a stash of records from all over the continent and is disinterested in rock, country, or any music from elsewhere. And he doesn’t make a statement with his choice of music. Qamar is a statements girl and declares that jazz is the music to cherish. Curiously, when the two talk about jazz, literature, or anything serious, they speak in English, in which they feel more comfortable. They lapse into Somali when the topic is one of immediate concern: cigarettes, food, cinema money, or cash for more mobile phone minutes. At present, they are speaking in Somali interspersed with English words.
“Ever listen to Somali music?” Salif asks.
“I’ve had Somali music up to here.” Qamar touches her throat. “I had to listen to it as a child every time I got into the car, being picked up from school or taken shopping. Also, if I want to hear Somali music, I go downstairs: My mother has it on all the time. Except we seldom hear it in the house lately because Mum is in no mood to play music, any music, these days.”
“But you are your own person now, or so you think.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“You become more tolerant of the choices other people make when you are your own person. A girl your age with your background should allow others to make their choices and not take things in a personal way, as one does when one is a child. Wouldn’t you agree?”
The cigarette is finished. Qamar picks up the ashtray, steps into the adjoining bathroom, empties the ashtray into the toilet, and flushes it before she returns to the bed.
She says, “Have we become our own persons?”
“Listening to your parents’ choice of music and fussing are run of the mill experiences during the transition from the person our parents want us to be and the person we eventually become. Along the way, one loses a few things and gains others.”
“Life is boring, life is exciting.”
Qamar takes a sip of water from the glass on her side of the bed.