“I was hard to awaken too when I was young.”
“She reads till very late. That’s why she can’t wake up.”
“Maybe she finds it difficult to sleep, as I did. I used to read or draw figurines, faces of humans, or animals. I fought with our mum when she came in and turned the lights off.”
Salif stares away in the distance, as if in discomfort. Maybe he doesn’t like her to compare her younger self to Dahaba, Bella thinks.
It’s the sudden silence of the house once the alarm is off that wakes Dahaba, who, rubbing her eyes red, joins them, asking what has happened. Bella and Salif look amused, and Bella says, “Not to worry.” Dahaba and Salif are thirsty and want water to drink, and Bella wants to have tea, so they gather in the kitchen.
Bella asks them about their conversations with their mother the previous day, and Salif tells her about Valerie’s plans to found a trust. Bella knows that Valerie hasn’t the wherewithal to fund a trust, or even to set one up, without Bella’s tacit approval and backing, but knowing that Valerie’s ploy is no real threat, she is sorry that it has backfired on her. How, Bella wonders, can she give the children and their mother a chance to arrive at a rapprochement?
Instantly it comes to her: How about inviting Valerie and Padmini along on an outing to Lake Naivasha today? They’ll stop to have a picnic by the lake, and if there is time, they’ll venture farther up the Rift Valley. Even better if the children are the ones who invite them.
Dahaba is enthused about the plan, but she insists that Salif make the call, not her. After all, it’s Salif who was so rude to Valerie when she called him at their friends’.
“I will do it with pleasure, Auntie,” says Salif, “first thing in the morning.”
It is after three in the morning when they retreat upstairs, and still later when Bella leaves two presents wrapped in pretty paper outside of their bedroom doors. Then she too goes back to bed.
—
The alarm goes off again a couple of hours later, coinciding with the muezzin’s call to prayer. As before, Bella is the first to come out of her bedroom, and once again she is joined by Salif, who, cursing, comes to her aid and turns it off.
Bella says, “We need to have the alarm serviced.”
“I’ll see to that, Auntie.”
“Don’t alarms put the fear of the Almighty into you?”
“No, because I know how to disarm ours.”
“Clever boy,” she says, and she asks if he wants to join her for breakfast. He accepts, and she goes downstairs to get the meal started while he takes a shower and dresses. When he walks into the kitchen after his shower, Salif is carrying the wrapped present. She pretends not to notice it until he sits at the table and unwraps it and exclaims in delight. He walks over to the stove and gives her a hug and a kiss. “How could I have missed this?” he asks. He is effusive in his thanks, although he struggles to find the words with which to express his gratitude.
“You weren’t expecting it.”
“I must’ve been exhausted too.”
“Glad you like it.”
“Am I ready to roll?”
“You are.”
“Is there film in it?”
“Of course.”
“Is it color?”
“There is a roll of color film in it, but I also bought one that is black and white from Nakumatt when I went there for last night’s shop,” Bella says. “I prefer the traditional in most things, and the memory of holding my first camera, putting a roll of film in it, taking photos, and then developing them is indelible. There is something hauntingly beautiful about the process itself: the feel of the photo paper, the smell of the chemicals, the anticipation of the details that will be revealed. There is none of that with the immediacy of digital photography.”
Salif has already aimed the camera at her and begun to take his own pictures of her during this soliloquy, capturing the eyes she narrows as though she were focusing on an unreachably distant image. She is remembering a couple of lines from a Rilke poem — Rilke, who began to mean something to her when she visited the Castello di Duino near Trieste, where she spent three months after Hurdo’s burial in Toronto. Afterward, she’d learned sufficient German that, with the help of an Italian translation, she could read the master’s elegies to that beautiful place. In the poem titled “Turning-Point,” Rilke alludes to the fact that even looking has a boundary and that the world that is looked at so deeply wants to flourish in love, yearns to “do heart-work / on all the images imprisoned within you.”
Bella shakes herself out of her reverie. “You’d best call your mother now to see if she and Padmini will be able to join us today.”
Salif dials her, looking apprehensive, but from the change in his face it is obvious to Bella that her plan has worked. Salif has woken Valerie, but once she understands why he is calling, she accepts eagerly. She says they will be at the house as soon as they can dress and shower and arrange a taxi.
“Excellent,” says Bella. “Now what would you like for breakfast?”
“What are the choices?”
“I did a big shop,” she says. “Come, open the fridge.”
“Bacon, with bread and two eggs sunny side up if that is no problem,” he says, taking out the ketchup and closing the fridge.
“Why do you say, ‘If it is no problem’?”
“I thought you might disapprove, seeing that you were brought up in a Muslim household.”
“I got it for you and Dahaba,” she says.
“But you don’t eat it yourself?”
“Not because of religious reasons.”
“Why then?”
“Too salty and too fatty.”
“You know what Dad used to say?”
“Remind me.”
“He found the idea of eating pork abhorrent.”
“But not for religious reasons, right?”
“Same as you on that score.”
She places the bacon in the pan, overlapping the slices, and then puts some porridge for herself to simmer. She breaks the eggs into the pan and asks Salif to put the bread in the toaster. She doesn’t turn the eggs but leaves the yolks golden and runny, just as he’d asked. She stirs her porridge and turns the bacon with a practiced hand, making her meal and his almost at the same moment so they can eat together. “Bismillah,” she says, and he wishes her “Bon appétit!”
Barely has either of them taken a mouthful when Dahaba appears in the doorway, groggily focusing on the camera next to Salif’s plate.
“Why did you give it to him, Auntie?” she asks.
“Give what to whom?”
“The beautiful camera.”
Bella looks at Salif in a manner that makes it clear that she does not want him to rise to Dahaba’s provocation. Then she says to Dahaba, “First a good morning greeting, my darling.”
“Good morning, Auntie.”
“Did you sleep well?”
“I did, only I thought I heard a loud noise going off, and some people speaking in the landing above the staircase. But I was too exhausted to get up to see if any of it was real. Now it is the smell of frying bacon that has woken me. Can you make some for me, Auntie?”
“Of course, my darling,” says Bella, and she gets up and gives her niece a hug and a loving kiss.
Salif speaks up. “Why don’t you eat your porridge while it’s nice and hot, Auntie, and I’ll offer my bacon to Dahaba. I don’t mind waiting a few more minutes for my own.”
“Thanks, darling, but I’ll make her own,” Bella says. “What else would you like with your bacon?”
“Same as Salif’s, except I don’t like the yolks liquid. In the meantime, I’ll pop a slice of bread in the toaster if there is some to be had.” Dahaba makes as if she will do as she says, but she moves half-heartedly, as if hoping that someone else will beat her to it. She looks tired.