Dinner over, Salif volunteers to do the washing up, wearing his headphones so he can listen to music as he does so. Valerie and Dahaba take their leave and go up to the girl’s room, voices low, still engrossed in each other. Bella puts on a CD of Miles Davis playing in India, and Padmini, who is not familiar with it, seems to enjoy it. And when Salif has done the washing up, he observes that their glasses are empty and brings the wine bottle to refill their glasses.
“Thanks, my darling, for the washing up,” says Bella.
“I didn’t cook or serve, so I must wash.”
“He’s a considerate young man,” says Padmini, and Bella agrees.
He smiles sweetly and says, “I’ve been thinking, Auntie Padmini!”
“Tell me, what have you been thinking?”
“Wouldn’t it be a very wonderful idea if Dahaba, Auntie, and I came to visit you and Mum in India and stayed in your hotel in Pondicherry?”
Padmini, surprising even herself, pulls him over to where she is sitting and she gives him a kiss on the cheek, her warmest and most genuine gesture yet. “But that would be wonderful,” she cries. “And it’ll make your mum full of rejoicing too.”
“What do you think, Bella?” asks Padmini.
“I had no idea he was thinking along those lines, but what a brilliant idea,” says Bella. “Of course we would love to visit you in India and stay in the hotel.” Then, the cautious adult in Bella resurfacing, she says, “Such visits benefit from early planning. Yes, that would be stupendous.”
Salif adds, “We are now old enough and travel savvy enough to come on our own if Auntie Bella is unavailable to come with us.”
“But we would really love for her to come too,” says Padmini.
They take a collective breather, as each of them imagines the context in which this scenario might take place. For Padmini, the prospect is particularly sweet, as nearly all of the visitors to their hotel and restaurant are strangers. To have “family” visit them in India for the first time is a very exciting prospect.
Happy in themselves, Valerie and Dahaba come down and join the rest. They sit next to each other, but not in a way that excludes the others. Salif, attentive as ever, brings a soft drink for Dahaba and the wine bottle, and Bella has the honor of refilling Valerie’s glass.
Valerie senses that the silence is charged with meaning and so she asks of no one in particular, “Has anything I need to know about taken place since I was last here?”
“There is news that will delight you,” says Padmini. “Your son here has been speaking of his wish to visit us in Pondicherry and stay with us in our hotel, darling. Isn’t that fabulous news?”
And before Valerie has had the time to react to the news, Dahaba lets out a squeal of joy, “This is what I’ve been thinking the past hour and a half.”
“Have you, darling?” says Valerie.
Dahaba, enthused albeit rueful, now says, “My brother always steals my best ideas and passes them off as his own. What am I to do about that, Mum?”
Valerie looks as if someone has stolen her thunder and she doesn’t know what reaction to give. But Dahaba is so taken with the idea that she is bouncing on the couch, her feet catching the weight of her body and pushing off again. “When?” she says.
Salif says, “We need to plan ahead, Mum.”
“What do you think, Mum?” asks Dahaba.
Valerie scrambles for an enthusiastic response, but it doesn’t come easy to her. Bella thinks she knows what Valerie is thinking: Since the idea was not hers, then Bella must be behind it all. “Sweet, very sweet,” she says, but her body language says something else. Still, while she doesn’t appear exactly enraptured with the idea, neither does she throw cold water on it. “We would love them to come, wouldn’t we, darling?” she says to Padmini, feeling everyone’s eyes trained on her. Then she deflects the attention by saying to Salif, “Give us a kiss now, why don’t you, darling.”
Salif does as he is told. Then more drinks are poured, Valerie switching back to hard liquor — whiskey and water, which Padmini makes for her the way she knows Valerie likes it.
Valerie says, “As a professional photographer, have you taken pictures here in Kenya?”
“I did take photos before on commission, photos that were published in magazines in Italy and France — not of animals, but only of people and landscapes. This visit, I have been too busy to take any, but I plan to do so soon,” says Bella.
“Have you taken pictures of the Somalis here?”
“I did so on my last visit a couple of years back from the vantage point of an attic two flights above an Italian restaurant on Mama Ngina Street. My subjects — three Somali men, each more handsome than the next — had no idea I was taking their photos. I also took pictures of Somali women in all sorts of outfits, some as striking as they were mysterious on account of their self-exclusion.”
Bella takes a sip of her water and then waits with the studied patience of an angler for someone to comment on what she has said. When no fish takes the bite, she tells them about the Italian owner of the restaurant, who made a subtle pass at her. “What nerve!” she said.
Salif seems uncomfortable and changes the subject. “Tell us more about the subjects of your photographs, Auntie Bella.”
But Valerie interrupts, “It always amazes me how good-looking Africans generally are compared to other peoples. Smooth skins, broad features, gorgeous eyes, statuesque, the palms of their hands as pale as the stones at the bottom of a lake, shiny and clean. They are gorgeous people, the men as well as the women. I would love to see some of your photographs.”
Padmini says, “I can’t stand the veiled women.”
“If you want to know the women, you must visit them in their private spaces,” Bella says. “There is a falsity, a sort of subtle theatricality, to them when you view them in public spaces.”
Valerie says, “They strike me as pretentious.”
Padmini says, “How can a country blessed with so many of the world’s most famous models, the world’s most stunning women, deny us the pleasure of feasting our eyes?”
Dahaba remembers Aar telling her that there was a time when the only veiled women in Somalia were the Arab women, Yemenis. “Covered from head to toe and all in black, as if in mourning.”
“I recall our Somali neighbors in Uganda,” Padmini says, “and after we relocated to England, we had Somali neighbors in our area of town too. In Uganda, they struck me as the most colorful people, their clothes far more beautiful than any sari. In England, however, where there is a growing population of Somalis, they are unsmiling, their expressions dour, and they dress all in gray.”
“What do the two lots of Somalis have in common?” asks Salif, “the Somalis of your childhood in Uganda and the Somalis in England?”
Padmini says, “They are all a noisy lot.”
“What else?” Salif asks.
“In Uganda, their daughters are irresistibly fetching, unlike any I have seen. In fact, I can trace my fascination with women’s faces and bodies to this period of my life. I envied them their irresistibility! But they had no time for me. Look at Bella, and look at Dahaba, both of you lookers in your own ways. It would be criminal to deprive us of the pleasure to see either of you.”
Valerie asks Bella, “Are veiling and infibulation linked in any way?”
“No link whatsoever.”
Padmini says, “Is there a difference between infibulation or female circumcision and genital mutilation, which seems to be the term these days?”